MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – When the late Joe Fryz was playing high school basketball at Moon Township back in the mid-1970s, his decision to sign with West Virginia instead of Pitt sent convulsions through the Panther program.
Its coach at the time, Tim Grgurich, assumed Fryz would end up at Pitt just like Moon Township's Tom Richards did a few years prior. But Fryz, who died in 2017, chose to take a different course, and Grgurich chose never to speak to him again for the remainder of Fryz's life.
That's a true story, one of many in a longtime basketball rivalry that has since turned into a game full of strangers.
For West Virginia and its new coach Ross Hodge, a Dallas, Texas, native, his knowledge of the Backyard Brawl consists of last spring's baseball game at Kendrick Family Ballpark when his son listened for the first time to the Mountaineers' version of "Sweet Caroline" playing on the public address system, a football game at Milan Puskar Stadium earlier this year and a few random stories.
West Virginia-Pitt games like this one played at the Coliseum on Dec. 12, 1987 brought out the best in both teams and fan bases (WVU Athletic Communications).
"It's catchy," Hodge admits of West Virginia's version of Neil Diamond's famous song.
Hodge's three best players available for tomorrow's game grew up in Ocala, Florida, Brooklyn, New York and Tampa, Florida.
There isn't a single player on West Virginia's roster this year from either West Virginia or Pennsylvania.
Pitt coach Jeff Capel, a Fayetteville, North Carolina, native, who was raised on ACC basketball while playing at Duke, has faced West Virginia six times since taking over the Panther program eight years ago in 2018. He lost the first four, including blowout defeats in 2019, 2021 and 2022, before winning the last two in blowout fashion.
Hodge's brief relationship with Pitt's coach consists of Capel once shopping for some of his players when he was coaching at Oklahoma and Hodge was coaching at Paris Junior College.
Pitt's roster of players this year come from all over the world from such faraway places as Sydney and Brisbane, Australia, Dakar, Senegal, and North Vancouver, British Columbia.
Capel said he is interested to see how his guys respond in a new environment for them.
"We've been comfortable," he said. "Our two exhibition games were (at home), and we've played three games (at home). I'm anxious to see how we respond to hostility, how we respond to really good competition and the type of passion that I know will be in that building."
"I'm looking forward to learning from this experience and growing through it together," Hodge added.
Of Capel's top performers, only one - sophomore guard Brandin Cummings - hails from the immediate area, coming from nearby Midland, Pennsylvania. Cummings didn't play during Monday night's 78-66 victory over Eastern Michigan, but West Virginia is planning on him being available on Thursday night in Morgantown.
"Until you hear otherwise, you kind of have to assume (he's) going to play," Hodge said. "Unless it's a season-ending injury, you've got to go into it preparing for him to play."
Incidentally, West Virginia's last player from Midland was forward Dennis Hosey, who played in the late 1970s for coaches Joedy Gardner and Gale Catlett.
Back then, the two schools fought tooth and nail for recruits.
Once, after Uniontown All-American guard Wil Robinson signed with West Virginia, a Pitt fan showed his disdain for Robinson by throwing a dead fish out onto the floor before he attempted a free throw up at old Fitzgerald Field House, requiring longtime equipment man Leo "Horse" Czarnecki to clean up the messy situation.
Pitt basketball coach Buzz Ridl's style of play was so unappealing to local players that his great nephew, Stan Boskovich, from nearby Masontown, Pennsylvania, decided to play for West Virginia instead.
The late Gary McPherson, who recruited Western Pennsylvania for West Virginia back in the early 1970s, once had his heart broken when Braddock High star forward Billy Knight opted to sign with Pitt.
"We thought we had a good shot at getting him," McPherson once recalled.
The two schools battled for players far beyond the tri-state area, as well. Guard Curtis Aiken, who today can be heard on Pitt radio broadcasts with veteran Panther voice Bill Hillgrove, once chose Pitt over West Virginia after the Mountaineers had signed forward Lester Rowe.
Both were national-caliber recruits from Buffalo.
Legendary "Voice of the Mountaineers" Jack Fleming used to do some Steel City recruiting for West Virginia when he called Pittsburgh Steelers games, prompting some of the Golden Panthers to take exception to his meddling.
At halftime of an ECAC basketball tournament game played at the Coliseum in the mid-1970s, some Pitt boosters paid a couple of students to dump a cup of urine on Fleming's head while he was on the air.
That's a true story!
Another true story was the time in 1982 when West Virginia coach Gale Catlett called Pitt's basketball program "mediocre" soon after the Panthers had announced they were leaving the Eastern 8 for the Big East.
Catlett, overcome with euphoria, made the remark following his team's 82-77 victory against the Panthers before a record crowd of 16,704 at the Coliseum – some 2,000 more than was legally allowed to be in the building!
Pitt's Roy Chipman thought so much of Catlett's "mediocre" comment that he left the quote pinned to the team's bulletin board for the entire time he coached there.
Chipman, too, had some zany moments, like the time he chased referee Jack Prettyman all the way to the locker room at Fitzgerald Field House, yelling "Mickey Mouse call! Mickey Mouse call!" after Prettyman's late lane violation call cost Pitt a chance to knock off the nationally ranked Mountaineers.
It didn't help matters much when it became known that Prettyman hailed from Moundsville, West Virginia!
Catlett once refused to bring his team out onto the floor after seeing shot clocks on each basket for a game played at Pitt. Back in those days, playing with shot clocks was optional, and nobody had told Catlett that they would be used, requiring Pitt associate athletic director Dean Billick to walk up to his office and produce a signed game contract.
Catlett's antagonism with Pitt dated back to his playing days in the early 1960s when his fights with Brian Generalovich were legendary in Backyard Brawl lore.
The way the stories go down here, Generalovich threw elbows, requiring Catlett to throw punches. The Cat, who recently turned 85 on Halloween, is still pretty spry for his age, by the way.
And, for those old enough to remember, the last game ever played at the old Field House on March 3, 1970, was a come-from-behind 92-87 Panther victory. West Virginia planned a celebration with balloons and the band playing Auld Lang Syne afterward but after the way the game ended so miserably for the Mountaineers, everybody just got up and left the arena.
The Pitt fans gleefully claimed the building was evacuated.
All of this brings us back to today.
The two teams will be meeting for the 192nd time, according to West Virginia's game notes. Pitt's game notes also finally reflect the same number of games after grudgingly acknowledging the ones that were played when Pitt was known as Western University of Pennsylvania.
Ninety-four of those contests have been played in Morgantown, 38 of them at newly named Hope Coliseum. Pitt has won 11 times in this building, all of its victories coming since 1987.
Two years ago, Pitt defeated West Virginia here 80-63, and its fans let the Mountaineer fans know about it.
Of course, that's what happens in rivalry games, even ones with mostly strangers playing in them.
"Like I told our guys yesterday, two things can be true at once," Hodge explained. "You can't really shy away from the fact that it is a big game. You don't have to be here long to realize how important the game is to so many people around this state and our University.
"At the same time, understanding that regardless of what happens (Thursday night), you have 26 more regular season games and hopefully Big 12 Tournament and NCAA Tournament (games) and you're making a run," he added. "While it is important and you can't shy away from it, you're long-term goals are not a formality afterward. You have to play with emotion but not play emotional and let the game break you down and get you outside of character."
As the late Bruce Keidan once memorably wrote in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, West Virginia-Pitt basketball games were never over "until the fat lady got her lights punched out."
Yikes.
Definitely different times back then!
Thursday night's game will tip off at 6 p.m. and will be televised nationally on FS1 (Connor Onion and Miles Simon).
Mountaineer Sports Network from Learfield radio coverage with Tony Caridi, Brad Howe and David Kahn will get things started at 5 p.m. with the Coca Cola Pregame Show on stations throughout West Virginia, online via WVUsports.com and the Varsity Network and WVU Gameday apps.
A very limited number of tickets still remain and can be purchased by logging on to WVUGAME.com.
