West Virginia vs Pittsburgh Basketball Recap

West Virginia 70, Pittsburgh 51

While South Florida is playing its way into the NCAA Tournament conversation and racking up unexpected Big East wins, other teams in the conference suddenly have to feel a little bit uneasy about their postseason destinations.

Teams like the Pittsburgh Panthers.

Yes, coach Jamie Dixon's club is still in decent shape, but if the boys from Western Pennsylvania don't get on their high horse pretty soon, a lot of sweating bullets will be seen on the foreheads of Pitt players and coaches. Wednesday night's 19-point loss at West Virginia showed that this team needs to get healthy in short order... and not from a physical standpoint.

Jermaine Dixon - a core member of the Panthers who missed all of Sunday's loss to South Florida with an injury - was back in the lineup for Pitt on this night in Morgantown, W. Va. Moreover, Dixon (no relation to his head coach) played 34 minutes and proved to be his team's leading scorer. If anyone had a right to say that he wasn't responsible for his team's lopsided loss at WVU Coliseum, it was the young Dixon.

There was only one problem with his team-leading point total, however: It didn't add up to very much.

Jermaine Dixon scored only 13 points on Wednesday, and only one of his teammates - guard Ashton Gibbs - was able to join him in double figures (with 11 points). And on that note, it must be pointed out that Gibbs needed 13 shots (only two of which he made) to register his deceptively ineffective 11-point total. With Pitt hitting just 30 percent of its 58 field goal attempts, the Panthers were never able to put together the second-half run they needed in order to be competitive. There was nothing positive for them to take away from this tilt.

That's largely because West Virginia simply wouldn't allow Pitt to feel comfortable.

The Mountaineers, led by defense-first head coach Bob Huggins, threw waves of bodies at the not-so-deep Panthers. Huggins gave a minimum of at least seven minutes to nine different players, including touted Turkish freshman Deniz Kilicli, who scored 9 points and didn't miss a field goal attempt (4 of 4) in his seven minutes on the floor. Armed with depth and (courtesy of Kilicli) an extra measure of power, WVU wiped Pittsburgh off the glass (42-30) and swatted five shots compared to only two for Pittsburgh. The Mountaineers thwarted Pittsburgh's offense with their agility and then shut down the Panthers with their power near the rim. Road teams need to rebound well and get second-chance points, and that's exactly what Pitt was unable to do in Morgantown.

Now begins the road back to the NCAA Tournament for the Pittsburgh Panthers. If they don't shake off this losing skid, they just might watch the Big Dance on TV as they prepare for the National Invitation Tournament in the middle of March.

By: Matt Zemek
BigEast-fans.com Staff Writer