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MORGANTOWN -- Not since a certain former West Virginia University basketball coach got lost in Pittsburgh a year and a half ago has anyone from West Virginia had a worse night in the Steel City than current WVU coach Darian DeVries and his Mountaineers as they took an 86-62 drubbing from the Panthers.
West Virginia had won the last four renewals of the Backyard Brawl in Pittsburgh but this one was decided decisively and quickly as the Panthers, their student section roaring, rushed to a 44-22 lead.
They built the lead to a high of 31 points five minutes into the second half and from there on, the Pitt fans were chanting, "Go home, Mountaineers!" over and over and you had the feeling they would have loved to have complied.
"I'm incredibly disappointed. There's no way to sugar coat it," DeVries said in his post-game radio interview.
The truth was most of the Mountaineers' problems came as the starters managed just 32 points.
If there was any bright spot it came from true freshman Jonathan Powell, who was hardly a wide-eyed rookie in his first Backyard Brawl, leading WVU with 16 points scored, hitting 6-of-12 shots, 4-of-10 of them from 3 on an evening when WVU was far off in its shooting.
"I was really happy with the way he came in and played. He played incredibly hard," DeVries said. "KJ Tenner played well, too."
Tenner is the team's other true freshman.
"I have no complaints with the way the two freshmen performed, especially for their first road game," DeVries said.
But that, along with some nice minutes inside from big man Eduardo Andre, covers the positive in the evening.
WVU hit just 39% of its shots, improving some against the Pitt subs over the final 5 minutes, while Pitt hit 48%. In 3-point shooting it was 21% for WVU and 37% for Pitt, while the Mountaineers hit just 53% of their free throws including two misses that were air balls.
"We got off to a poor start and never recovered," DeVries said. "We couldn't ever get the water shut off. We never found our rhythm tonight."
DeVries said they have to go back to the drawing board and find ways to create shots for the right players, to get to the free throw and to rebound, having been outrebounded 45-32.
"It's a long, long season, but we are going to work at it," DeVries said. "The coaches and the players, we got to get some things figured out. We will continue to work and make the necessary changes we need to do to try and get better."
You knew it was the Backyard Brawl right from the start.
On the Mountaineers first possession, Amani Hansberry went up for a shot which was challenged by the Panthers' Guillermo Diaz-Graham. The ball went in and the blood began flowing from Diaz Graham's nose.
That sent the ACC officiating crew to the monitor, counting the basket but hitting Hansberry with a level 1 flagrant foul as his elbow had caused the damage.
From then on, though, all of the damage was caused by the Panthers, who doubled up the Mountaineers, 44-22, as their fans hooted and howled the night away at the Pete.
Probably all you really need to know about the first half was that at one point Toby Okani was fouled, one of the few calls that went WVU's way.
He missed both shots.
Both were air balls.
What can you say when that happens?
Interestingly, WVU played some pretty good defense in the half. It was just that everything Pitt threw up went in, no matter how hard they had to work to get the shot. The Panthers finished the half hitting 51.7% of their shots while making 6-of-15 from 3.
At the same time WVU started off missing their first 8 3's, finished with just 2-of-14 while Pitt took the Mountaineers' high scorer Darian DeVries out of the game. He got off only 6 shots in the half and made only 1 of them.
"They did a good job of limiting his catches," Darian DeVries said. "He didn't get many good looks."