Men’s basketball: Pitt ready for Backyard Brawl

The Pitt men’s basketball team has been in a relatively unfamiliar position this past… The Pitt men’s basketball team has been in a relatively unfamiliar position this past week.

Coming off a 60-59 loss at St. John’s on Saturday, the past few days marked only the third time this season that the Panthers have had to prepare for a game while recovering from a loss.

“You learn from wins and you learn from losses,” Pitt head coach Jamie Dixon said in a news conference this week. “We’re still in a pretty good position.”

Despite falling one point short at Madison Square Garden against St. John’s, Pitt (24-3, 12-2 Big East) enters tonight’s much-anticipated Backyard Brawl against West Virginia at the Petersen Events Center with a two-game lead in the Big East standings.

“We know what’s at stake [against West Virginia]. We want to come out and win this Big East season championship and we know we can do that these last four games,” Pitt senior forward Gilbert Brown said. “So we have to come out and make a statement and play really aggressive, and play together on Thursday.”

The Panthers can also take solace in the fact that junior guard and leading scorer Ashton Gibbs, who played at St. John’s and scored a career-high 26 points after missing the previous three games with an MCL injury, will play in his first home game since Pitt defeated Cincinnati at the Pete on Feb. 5.

Pitt has also already defeated the rival Mountaineers once this season.

On Feb. 7, in their first game without Gibbs, the Panthers traveled to a tough environment in Morgantown, W.Va., and emerged with a gutsy 71-66 win, with four Pitt players scoring in double figures.

West Virginia (17-9, 8-6 Big East) comes into the second Backyard Brawl of the season having recorded one of its biggest wins of the year in its last game.

Having lost three of their previous four games, the Mountaineers responded and comfortably beat then-No. 7 Notre Dame 72-58 Saturday in Morgantown, W.Va.

“I thought we played with a lot of enthusiasm throughout the whole game,” West Virginia head coach Bob Huggins said after the Notre Dame victory. “This is probably as hard as we have played since the Purdue game for 40 minutes. I think everyone we put in played hard.”

The Mountaineers, like Pitt, have spent significant time in recent games without their leading scorer.

West Virginia senior guard Casey Mitchell, who is averaging 14.8 points per game, was suspended for three games by Huggins in January for violating team rules and has seen fewer minutes since his return.

But Mitchell’s absence has proved the Mountaineers are far from a one-man team.

Junior forward Kevin Jones and junior guard Darryl Bryant both average in double figures for West Virginia, with 12.7 and 11.0 points per game, respectively. Senior Joe Mazzulla also helps the Mountaineers in all facets of the game. The defensive-minded guard averages 6.7 points, 3.9 assists and 3.8 rebounds per game.

“It is kind of tough playing against two point guards,” Pitt sophomore guard Travon Woodall said of Bryant and Mazzulla. “They’re both able to create for each other or for themselves, but we’ve just got to try to guard everybody the same with the same intensity.”

Thursday’s game also marks the first time the two teams have met at the Petersen Events Center since the unforgettable triple-overtime 98-95 Pitt victory over then No. 4 West Virginia last February.

But this year, the tables have turned on the two programs.

Like last season’s West Virginia team that would eventually make the Final Four, the Panthers have spent most of this year ranked in the top five nationally and enter Thursday’s game No. 4 in the AP Poll and No. 6 in the ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll. The Mountaineers come into the showdown unranked, although they received votes in both polls.

Pitt has won nine of the last 10 at home against West Virginia, but last year’s classic proves that in the Backyard Brawl, rankings and records are meaningless.

“We know they’re hungry, especially coming off of a win. They want to prove that they can beat us,” Brown said. “We have to stay focused, stay on our heels and definitely not take them lightly.”