West Virginia takes on No. 17 Georgetown in search of third win in a row

Tuesday night marks the beginning of a challenging stretch of Big East Conference games for West Virginia as it hosts No. 17 Georgetown tonight. Tipoff is set for 7 p.m. at the Coliseum.

The visiting Hoyas (15-5, 4-3) are the first of five ranked teams the Mountaineers (14-5, 4-2) will face in the next seven games.

Georgetown leads the all-time series 12-9 – including a win last year – but the Mountaineers have fared well in the series lately, winning five of the last seven games.

West Virginia head coach Mike Carey still remembers the difficult 65-60 loss his team sustained last year on the road at Georgetown, and he hopes the team will avoid repeating some of the same costly mistakes the Mountaineers made in that game.

"They out-rebounded us bad last year, and they backdoored us," Carey said. "We had a three-point lead late in the game, and they backdoored us twice and got a layup, and we ended up getting beat.

"We were able to turn them over, but they also turned us over and out-rebounded and beat us on the boards, and we ended up losing."

Carey knows this matchup will be no easy task; one look at the Hoyas' roster shows both talent and depth are plentiful.

"If you look at their roster, they have five or six seniors on their team. Because of that, they press a lot and they'll play zone traps for the majority of their game," he said.

"I think they lost one player from last year and have everybody else back. They're a veteran team, and we're going to have our hands full, needless to say."

The Hoyas possess one of the most talented guards in the country in junior Sugar Rodgers. An honorable mention all-America selection last year, Rodgers is averaging 20 points per game this season – tops in the Big East.

Carey made it clear the key to containing a talent like Rodgers is to be aware of where she is at all times.

"We have to know where she's at," Carey said of Rodgers. "She gets a lot of her threes on the fast break. They look for her hard on the fast break.

"She moves well without the ball, and she can also put it on the floor. She's a legit player, and we have to be aware of that. With that being said, they have enough seniors and enough other players that can score, and we can't lose sight of that."

Senior forward Tia Magee provides the Hoyas with a legitimate inside presence to battle against West Virginia forwards juniors Asya Bussie and redshirt junior Ayana Dunning.

Magee averages 11.1 points per game and is Georgetown's leading rebounder, pulling down almost seven rebounds per contest.

Carey stressed both rebounding and taking care of the ball as perhaps the two most critical factors West Virginia needs to focus on if it intends to come away with a win.

"I think the biggest key to this game is going to be rebounding and not turning the ball over in their traps, especially near half court," he said. I even told our girls yesterday that I'd rather see them get a five-second count than turn the ball over and let them have a layup at the other end.

"If we don't take care of the basketball, which we haven't been doing a good job of, then it could be a long night."

West Virginia will need to play a full 40 minutes if it wishes to defeat Georgetown. Carey knows a second half like the Mountaineers played in its win against Pittsburgh won't get the job done against a tougher opponent like the Hoyas.

"I thought the first half of the Pitt game we played pretty well, and then the second half, we came out and stood around," he said.

"We have (five) ranked teams coming up, and if we don't play 40 minutes, we're not going to beat them."