MORGANTOWN, W. Va. — As the final seconds ticked away from West Virginia’s 69-59 victory Saturday against Pitt, Beetle Bolden turned toward his fellow students to begin the celebration while spinning the ball on his right index finger.
It was about an hour earlier he turned to his own head coach, Bob Huggins, and asked his coach for trust.
“I was on the bench after picking up two stupid fouls early,” Bolden said. “I asked coach Huggins to trust me not to foul anymore. I told him he could trust me and put me back in.”
Now, whether or not Huggins actually trusted Bolden or not is up for debate — “I put him back in, but I didn’t trust him,” Huggins joked afterward. — but how effective Bolden was is not.
“Usually with those two early fouls, you’re in two-foul jail,” West Virginia guard Chase Harler said. “I’ve been in that jail a few times. It was good. He didn’t pick up his third foul until the second half and got his fourth with, like, two minutes left. He was still aggressive out there, but he played smart.”
And he played pretty well, too, finishing with a team-high 18 points while adding six rebounds and four assists.
It led to the Mountaineers’ third straight win against the Panthers (7-3), the first three-game winning streak against their neighbors to the north since 1998. This one came in front of 13,670 fans inside the WVU Coliseum who saw the Mountaineers (6-3) beat Pitt at home for the first time Feb. 3, 2010. Both schools stopped playing from 2013 through 2016.
It was a game that saw quite a bit of everything, beginning with Sagaba Konate blocking seven shots to surpass D’Or Fischer as the school’s blocks king. Konate now has 191 to build on for the rest of his career.
Not bad for a young man who was listed as doubtful to play the day before the game.
“I tricked you, didn’t I?” Huggins said.
The game also saw a combined 50 turnovers, 49 fouls and five technical fouls.
“This West Virginia team is different from previous teams, certainly last year’s team,” Pitt coach Jeff Capel said. “So, they’re not forcing as many turnovers as they have been, but they certainly did today. Again, some of it was them, some of it was us.”
As part of West Virginia’s season-high 26 turnovers — the most since committing 27 against Syracuse in 2002 — the Mountaineers turned it over seven times in the final five minutes while trying to close the door.
“If you catch the ball and do what we call ‘square up,’ you can see the whole floor,” Huggins said. “If you catch it and turn sideways, you can only see the that side you’re looking at.
“Worse yet, if you catch it and dribble it, you’re liable to dribble it off a guy’s foot, which we did, or dribble it into a guy, which we did, because you don’t know where they are.”
It also saw Bolden maybe gain a little bit of trust from Huggins at what may be a critical point of the season for the Mountaineers.
“No, he usually wouldn’t put me back in,” Bolden said. “I didn’t know if he would put me back in, but I told him to trust me and then I had to make it work.”
He scored 11 of his 18 in the first half that saw two double-technical fouls called in what was some spirited play or a rekindling of the rivalry.
“They came out and played hard and then both teams really started to go hard at each other,” said WVU forward Esa Ahmad, who finished with 13 points and seven rebounds. “That’s how it’s supposed to be. We had to match their intensity and we did.”
His 3-pointer four minutes into the second half gave the Mountaineers a 46-31 lead and then Ahmad scored a minute later to give WVU its largest lead of the game.
Pitt got as close as eight points twice in the second half, but could never make any serious pushes to take the lead.
“It was a hard-fought game, a very physical game,” Capel said. “Obviously it was a very emotional game. At the end of the day, we have to minimize our mistakes. Them we have to be able to go get the ball. We have to be able to value the ball and we have to be able to get the ball. I thought those were the things that did us in.”
Pitt was led by Xavier Johnson’s 21 points and fellow freshman Trey McGowens added 18.
Konate added 16 points and nine rebounds to go along with his seven blocks.
West Virginia also had a 41-33 advantage on the boards, with 16 offensive rebounds.
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