Trends in the West Virginia game

West Virginia came out slow and lethargic at Madison Square Garden yesterday, and as a result allowed St. John's to jump out to a 33-19 lead at the break. The Johnnies pushed that lead to as much as 16 during the second half, but West Virginia came back.

The 'Neers, down 45-32 with 14:16 left in the game, would go on a 16-0 run to take the lead and outscored St. John's 47-15 during the rest of the game.

You shouldn't be surprised. No lead is safe in the Big East this season. Take a look at some of these comebacks:

• This isn't the first one for West Virginia. The Mountaineers were down 10 to Louisville with five minutes left before making a 17-4 run to close out the game.
  
• Villanova found themselves down 38-21 in Freedom Hall against Louisville, but they were able to cut the lead to seven by the half and took control in the second half, winning 92-84.
  
• Louisville also lost a 68-63 lead over Pitt with 34 seconds left, eventually losing in overtime. Its been a rough year for Rick Pitino.
  
• West Virginia also scored the final six points to overcome a 62-57 lead with just 62 seconds left against Marquette.
  
• Marquette was down 22 points to Villanova in the second half of their second meeting this season, but rallied and had the ball with 30 seconds left and down just two points.
  
• Georgetown was down 40-21 to UConn at the end of the first half before coming back to win 72-69 on Jan. 9th.
• Those very same Hoyas scored the first 14 points against Syracuse in the Carrier Dome, but found themselves down 34-29 at the half before losing by 17.
  
• And on Wednesday, Georgetown had a 13 point first half lead on Dominique Jones and South Florida before losing at home.
• That wasn't South Florida's only come back during their current four game winning streak. They were also down 13 with two minutes left against Providence before forcing overtime and eventually picking up the win.
• Seton Hall had a similar comeback, making up a ten point deficit in 50 seconds against WVU before eventually succumbing in overtime.
  
• DePaul was up 33-15 on Syracuse with 8:53 left in the first half, but the Orange would throw on a full court press, holding the Blue Demons to just 24 points the rest of the way to pick up a 59-57 win.
  

I'm sure there are a few that I missed as well (it doesn't even include the 12 point lead WVU overcame against Ohio State).

So as you can see, you never turn off a Big East game until the final whistle sounds.

This game also highlighted another trend we've seen this season.

Namely, Da'Sean Butler hitting big shots. In this one, Butler hit four threes and scored a three-point play as West Virginia made their game changing push in the second half. This came a week after he hit a game-winning 15 footer against Louisville, which was his third game-winner of the season (he scored on a layup to beat Cleveland State early in the season and knocked down a turnaround 18 footer to beat Marquette). Do I even need to mention the number of big shots he hit against Ohio State down the stretch?

There are a number of games that have established reputations for being big time clutch performers this season (Scottie Reynolds, Devan Downey, Nic Wise, Sherron Collins, Chandler Parsons), but no one has hit as many big shots as Butler has this year.