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For two days, Joe Alexander made Madison Square Garden his personal stage, delivering brilliant soliloquies and artistic interpretations of age-old basketball moves in eliminating Providence and Connecticut. But playing a third superb game in three days after seeing 79 minutes of action over the previous two days proved too tough a chore for the junior forward.

For West Virginia to defeat top-seeded Georgetown on Friday night in the Big East Tournament semifinals, Alexander would need help from his teammates, need them to share the offensive load so his legs would be free of some of the burden he carried in bringing the Mountaineers to this point.

But instead, his teammates' fatigue was as evident as the pep bands. In a first half that saw West Virginia fall behind by 12 points -- a margin it would never completely close -- the Mountaineers shot just 35 percent en route to a 72-55 loss. With a 2-for-7 first-half performance, Alexander was the biggest perpetrator. Turnarounds and bankshots that the net beckoned on the two previous afternoons were suddenly a bit short or a bit flat.

"I wasn't making shots that I've normally been making lately," said Alexander. "But it was due to stuff they were doing differently. They were having guys from the weakside coming and helping [on] me when I was driving, sometimes doubling in the post. So they did a good job."

Georgetown coach John Thompson gave credit to the diversity of looks Alexander saw from a triumvirate of defenders.

"They have shooters and other guys that can make plays around him," noted Thompson. "So it's not like you can really help too much. I just think that between Patrick [Ewing] and DaJuan [Summers] and for stretches also Jeremiah [Rivers], you know, they play him differently. So it's a different look, a different feel."

Alex Ruoff and Darris Nichols, whose shooting ability makes them the most obvious people Alexander would look to for support, combined for just three points on 1-of-5 shooting in the opening stanza. The generally sure-handed Mountaineers even committed seven turnovers in that first 20 minutes, the span in which Georgetown won the game. West Virginia's legs weren't prepared for another 40 minutes of physical sport, and their minds were too weary to make good decisions.

"We didn't get back early in the game. If you're that fatigued early in the game, we probably should have just called it off, and said we're just too tired to play," said Huggins sarcastically after the game.

Playing just a second game this week, Georgetown had no such problems. Coach John Thompson wove a nine-man rotation of players who each add a different piece to the lineup puzzle. In the first half, Roy Hibbert was able to get free near the basket for several dunks and lay-ins, but he also stepped out and hit a 3, an ominous sign for West Virginia at the 14:25 mark.

While Hibbert had the big scoring numbers -- 13 in the first half, 25 for the game -- next to his name a game after getting shutout, it was teammates that set him up for most of those chippies and added four first-half three-pointers.

"They got us more spread than when they got us before," said West Virginia head coach Bob Huggins. "When you let him catch it and bounce it a couple of times into the lane, he's going to throw that hook. We just couldn't get help to him -- didn't or couldn't."

Hibbert was a monster -- just ask him.

"'I'm a monster; be afraid,'" Hibbert said in the postgame press conference, quoting his shout during a Hoyas in-game run. "I don't really show a lot of emotion, but it's just the way our team was working, and the way I was getting the stops."

West Virginia picked up the pace and made a spirited charge in the second half, led by Ruoff and Nichols' bombing. The Mountaineers even got as close as four after Alex Ruoff made two technical free throws, but there was never a point when the Mountaineers truly felt like a threat to the defending champs. In fact, after Ruoff's free throws with 11:06 to play, West Virginia wouldn't score again until Alexander nailed a long jumper as the clock ticked to 3:14. By then, Georgetown was up 16, and Hoyas fans were confirming their tickets for the title game on Saturday night (and the optimistic among them were scoping out plane fares to San Antonio).

"I think from the beginning our focus and our energy at the defensive end kind of set the tone," said Thompson. "Just as a group, I think we set the tone with our defense."

After four months of underwhelming play during which Georgetown consistently shutdown opponents defensively but displayed none of the offensive efficiency that had marked the second Thompson era in D.C., the Hoyas have looked like a different offensive team here in New York. Part of that is the return of freshman Chris Wright. He adds a dribble-penetration element that was lost in his absence due to a foot injury. But Wright's contributions (three points, two assists in 13 minutes) were minimal on Friday after a stellar return against Villanova.

Instead, a team that wasn't particular adept at shooting for most of the season nailed 41 percent of its 3's (7-for-17) and killed West Virginia on the glass, 40-22. If there was anything more inexplicable than Georgetown's inability to hit shots for most of the season, it was GU's knack for getting beaten on the backboards. Neither was a problem in Friday's 17-point win.

Georgetown has gotten some breaks in this tournament. First, Villanova's Scottie Reynolds was forced to the bench with a cut over his eye at a crucial juncture of the second half on Thursday. Then, the other three top seeds lost in the quarterfinals, making the Hoyas the only team that wouldn't need to win four games in four days to take home the title -- a feat accomplished just once in the tournament's history.

When asked about the perception that his team was lucky, Thompson said, "I learned at a very young age when my pops was sitting in the chair that I now sit in, that people aren't always going to say good things about you. So you learn at a young age -- just do what you do. We know what we want to do: just keep winning games. If you want to call that lucky, we'll be lucky."

So, Georgetown got a tired West Virginia team on Friday and is going to get a tired Marquette or Pittsburgh team in Saturday's final. But it's important not to dismiss Georgetown's play as a matter of circumstance. After a season of fortuitous bounces and end-of-game breaks, the Hoyas no longer need breaks to win like one of the best teams in country.

They didn't need Joe Alexander to shoot 5-for-16 or for West Virginia to be playing on tired legs to gain a semifinal victory. The fact that those things happened on Friday night just made getting to their second straight conference tournament final a lot easier.