Backyard Brawl
February 04, 2005 11:27 AM | General
February 4, 2005
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia coach John Beilein says he got a real sense of the meaning of the West Virginia-Pitt rivalry his first season as Mountaineer coach when he arrived to a game against the Panthers in Morgantown an hour and a half early.
 |
||
| Pitt's Chevy Troutman and West Virginia's Tyrone Sally battle for a loose ball during last year's game in Morgantown. Pitt won that contest 67-58.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks photo |
“The first time I was here I showed up at six o’clock for a 7:30 ESPN game and the student section was already filled to the top,” he recalled. “We just won at Villanova and there was a lot of excitement and I could not believe that our student section would be there an hour and a half early: The same thing last year when we had 14,000 here for the game.”
The two teams have met 166 times previously with West Virginia holding an 89-77 advantage in the series. As with any longstanding rivalry, there have been countless memorable games and stories surrounding these nearby combatants.
Like the 1963 game in Pittsburgh when Pitt thought it had won at the buzzer by sinking a long shot only to have it waved off because another Panther player had called timeout beforehand. West Virginia won the game 68-67. Or a few years later when a Panther fan lobbed a dead fish onto the floor while West Virginia All-American guard Wil Robinson was attempting a free throw.
Former West Virginia coach Gale Catlett was a particular irritant to Panther supporters, having once called Pitt “a mediocre program” in 1982. His remarks sent the late Dr. Roy Chipman into convulsions and it was said that the news clipping of Catlett’s remark remained on the Panther bulletin board for years to come.
Three of West Virginia’s 10-best crowds ever at the WVU Coliseum have been for Pitt games, including a record 16,704 in 1982 that must have had the state Fire Marshall scratching his head.
“I don’t think I understood the meaning of (the West Virginia-Pitt series) having spent most of my time in upstate New York and spending five years at Richmond,” Beilein said. “I don’t think I understood how the Backyard Brawl carries over into the basketball arena, at least at West Virginia.
“I realize that this game is very important to a lot of people. Unfortunately Pitt has had the best of this rivalry for the last several occasions but hopefully it is something that we can start to change on Saturday,” he added.
Pitt hasn’t just had the best of the rivalry -- the Panthers have had their way with the Mountaineers of late. In its last five victories dating back to the 2002 season, Pitt has won by an average of 20.5 points per game. It is West Virginia’s longest stretch of futility against Pitt since the Great Depression when Pitt claimed nine straight from 1930-35.
Last year West Virginia was able to narrow the margin to single digits in a nine-point, 67-58 loss in Morgantown.
“You can look at any rivalry at different times and there is going to be years – a four or five-year run when a team has a terrific group of kids and Pittsburgh is in one of those runs right now like West Virginia has had in the past,” Beilein said.
None of West Virginia’s current team members have experienced a victory against the school’s most despised rival. Beilein says the losing streak has less to do with his team having a mental block against the Panthers and more to do with Pitt simply having the better team.
“When you’re trying to compete with the upper echelon of the Big East right now I don’t know if it’s as much mental as it is physical right now,” he said. “We have to really be very efficient in our game, do the things we can do as a team, and not go into the game and say, Okay, we’re just going to pound it inside all night because we’re a physical team because we’re not. As a result our game plan has to be one that best suits us for winning.”
Beilein admits one way to close the gap is to continue to recruit better players to West Virginia University. Despite the school’s location and the fact that it is competing in the best conference in the country, he believes that is possible to do.
“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think so,” he said. “A lot of that is luck, happenstance and hard work. I believe strongly that we can do it but it’s hard to do. Look at BC’s success. Their two best players were virtually not recruited. As a result you keep hoping you are going to find your (Jared) Dudley, your (Craig) Smith or your Chevy Troutmans – guys like that that you hope you can find somewhere along the line.”
The third-year coach says his Mountaineer program is at a different stage in its developmental process than Pitt -- Big East tournament champions in 2003 and three-time NCAA “Sweet 16” participants.
“One team went through one hellacious year three years ago and has had to pick itself up and build itself playing in the best league in the country,” Beilein said. “Certainly Pitt was down -- although they weren’t down that far -- when Ben (Howland) took over. He still had guys like Brandin Knight and people like that to offer guidance and make quick improvement.”
The Panthers once again are one of the conference favorites under second-year coach Jamie Dixon. Pitt (15-3, 5-2) comes into Saturday’s game having won three straight league games including back-to-back impressive wins over Connecticut and Syracuse.
Junior guard Carl Krauser and Troutman have played a key role in Pitt’s current run, and lead the team with averages of 16.3 points and 14.3 points per game respectively. Six-foot-10 sophomore Chris Taft is a man inside averaging 14.1 points and 7.3 rebounds per game. Pitt is shooting 48.5 percent from the field as a team and is limiting its opponents to an average of 60.5 points per game.
Saturday’s game will tip off at 6 pm and will be televised nationally on ESPN2 (Dan Shulman and Len Elmore). It will be the first nationally televised game at the Coliseum since Beilein’s first year in 2003 when the Mountaineers played host to Georgetown for an ESPN Big Monday contest.
The contest has been announced a sell-out with no tickets remaining.
