Pitt allows late lead to slip away

Trying to break a five-game losing streak, the Pitt women’s basketball team answered the call… Trying to break a five-game losing streak, the Pitt women’s basketball team answered the call against West Virginia, putting together what coach Agnus Berenato called “one of their best games of the season.”

Unfortunately for the Panthers, their best game didn’t get them past West Virginia’s star point guard Yolanda Paige.

After the Big East’s leading scorer, Meg Bulger, fouled out of the game with 49.4 seconds left to play, Paige put the Mountaineers on her shoulders, scoring the game’s final nine points while making two late steals to bring West Virginia back to a 61-55 win over the Panthers.

“When she left out, my heart dropped. I don’t like to see Meg come out of the game at all,” Paige said. “But I figured I had to step up. I should’ve stepped up earlier, but I came through at the end.”

Before Paige’s heroics, Pitt (11-12 overall, 3-9 Big East) — which had not trailed in the second half — put together a solid performance, paced by Marcedes Walker’s 16-point, 16-rebound performance. Jennifer Brown added 12 points for the Panthers. The Mountaineers (14-9, 5-7) got 16 points from Bulger and 13 points from Paige.

“We panicked at the end. We could’ve called timeout trying to inbound the ball, but we didn’t,” Berenato said.

Those botched inbound plays led to Paige’s steals and allowed West Virginia to come back after the Mountaineers were trailing 55-50 with 1:52 to play.

After the game Berenato lauded her freshmen, praising the play and attitude of Walker, Vika Sholokhova and Karlyle Lim.

“I think it says a lot that after the game at center court, it’s our freshman who are crying and who are upset,” Berenato said.

“We keep close,” Walker added about the three freshmen, “and we have to keep our heads up. We’re going to try hard. We’ve got to win some of these [upcoming] games.”

Lim added, “We came to the program knowing we wanted to be the ones to turn it around.”

The Panthers, late breakdowns aside, controlled much of the game.

Pitt took a 28-22 lead into halftime, driven by tough defense and good interior play. Brown and Walker combined to score 20 of the Panthers’ points, shooting 8-for-13 from the floor, with all their points coming from in the paint or at the free-throw line.

But the Panthers’ perimeter scoring was again lacking in the first half, as the guards combined to shoot two-for-16 in the period. A Sholokhova 3-pointer with 2:38 to play in the first half gave the Panthers their only outside points before the break.

In the second half, the Panthers’ shooters came alive, as Katie Histed and Jessica Allen made consecutive 3-pointers. But the Mountaineers kept pace early by trading baskets with them, in part through the outside shooting of Sherell Sowho and LaQuita Owens.

The play of the game came from Lim, with 12 minutes remaining, who got the crowd on its feet in her first home game since Dec. 9.

Lim stepped in, picked off a West Virginia pass and quickly led the Panthers in transition. Going down the center of the court with a three-on-two, Lim got into the lane and leaped toward the goal. She faked a pass to her right, causing the defender to turn away, then calmly sank the layup before hitting the ground.

“For the past six weeks, all I’ve been doing is sitting on the sidelines, watching the team. And every time you watch a game, you’re thinking, what can I do when I’m in there?” Lim said. “And now that I have the opportunity, I’m going to go out there and play hard.”

Lim and the Panthers will get their next opportunity on Saturday against Providence, which has only one win this season and sits at the bottom of the Big East standings. Tip-off is scheduled for 2 p.m. at the Petersen Events Center.