Late second-half meltdown allows Mountaineers to climb back

Pitt received a taste of history repeating itself last night in its 70-66 loss to West… Pitt received a taste of history repeating itself last night in its 70-66 loss to West Virginia — its second defeat at the hands of its Big East rival and Backyard Brawl foe this season.

Much like the first game of the series, Pitt played a respectable all-around game in the first half, holding West Virginia’s outside shooting to a sub-par effort and limiting the Mountaineers to just 35 percent from beyond the arc.

The second half, though, was another story.

Pitt was unable to hold off the constant shooting of West Virginia and its live-and-die mentality from the 3-point line and, more importantly, the outside presence of West Virginia center Kevin Pittsnogle.

It took him a while to get going, and even after scoring only two points in the first half, the same Pittsnogle that scorched the Panthers for 27 points in the two teams’ initial meeting eventually lit up the Panther defense for 20 points in the second half.

“Kevin is a terrific outside shooter,” West Virginia head coach John Beilein said. “We use that talent of his as much as we can and when he gets going like he did, he’s tough to stop.”

Before West Virginia ever got going, the Panthers had control throughout most of the game with everything going their way.

The guards delivered a few key jump shots just as the shot clock expired, and Chris Taft, along with Chevon Troutman, grabbed every rebound after each shot, defensive and offensive.

But as time crept past 10 minutes left in the second half, everything on both sides of the court fell apart for the Panther team.

Pitt entered those final 10 minutes with a 54-40 lead over West Virginia but couldn’t escape the Mountaineer shooting that connected on 72 percent of its attempts, including 75 percent from 3-point range, to finish the game on a 30-12 run to upset the Panthers.

“It’s very disappointing to be in the situation we were at and to come up short like that. It’s very disheartening for us,” Pitt head coach Jamie Dixon said, “but it was a number of their guys that hit shots at the end.”

Pittsnogle used his outside game to drain four 3-pointers over the next seven minutes that brought the Mountaineers back to within two points as the clock neared the three-minute mark.

His shots hit nothing but the bottom of the net, despite the hands of Taft and Mark McCarroll being in his face.

Pittsnogle’s deadly shooting forced Dixon into a few defensive moves that he described as “going with a smaller lineup, especially with a team that shoots the ball well from the 3-point line,” assigning the task of covering Pittsnogle to sophomore Levon Kendall.

Though Kendall’s ability to cover Pittsnogle on the perimeter shut down his 3-point shot, Pittsnogle was able to go inside on Kendall, drawing fouls to get to the charity stripe or using his hook shot to show off his inside game.

“When Kendall started guarding me, I just tried to go inside a little more, and that’s when I got my hook shot going,” Pittsnogle said. “I just let the game come to me and tried not to force any shots like I did in the first half.”

Pittsnogle’s six-of-six performance at the free-throw line put the game away for West Virginia as the seats inside the Petersen Events Center began to empty with slightly more than one minute left to play.

The win for West Virginia provides another argument for its case of being given a berth in the NCAA tournament next month, and puts a smile on its fans’ faces for having beaten their biggest rival for a second time.

“For West Virginia fans, that was great basketball for them tonight,” Beilein said. “The ball didn’t bounce our way until the last five minutes, and then everything went our way. It’s just a typical example of why anyone can love college basketball. You can expect the unexpected at any time in the game.”

For Pitt now, the road just gets a little bit tougher as it plays host to the defending national champion the Connecticut Huskies on Saturday.

A lot will be decided for the Panthers over the next week, but they first must worry about taking one game at a time and stashing wins away when given the opportunity.

“We just go to do the little things,” Antonio Graves said about the team’s recent meltdowns. “The little things like boxing out and staying tough on defense for 40 minutes strong.”