Oscar Tshiebwe's promise leads to dominance as West Virginia takes down Pitt

PITTSBURGH — The footage rolled again and again throughout this week on Oscar Tshiebwe’s iPad, telling a story only of frustrating mistakes piling up one after the other.

Tshiebwe’s collegiate debut last week against Akron was a collection of early foul trouble that led to time mostly spent sitting on the bench.

“I can’t tell you how many times I watched that game,” he said. “It kept making me mad, because I just saw one mistake after the other. It was motivation for me.”

It showed. Instead of early foul trouble, the 6-foot-9, 258-pound forward took control of the game from the beginning. Tshiebwe’s first double-double — 20 points and 17 rebounds — of his career led to the Mountaineers’ 68-53 victory against the Panthers, in front of 11,725 fans inside the Petersen Events Center.

“Double-double?” WVU guard Jordan McCabe questioned. “That was more than just a double-double. He nearly had 20 and 20. That’s more than just a regular double-double.”

The regular double-double came in the first half, when he had 12 points and 12 rebounds by halftime. He scored West Virginia’s first six points of the game and Pitt simply had no answer for him early.

What led to it? It just may have been watching that first game over and over again, which led to a promise he made Huggins.

“I promised coach, ‘If you let me play, I’m going to run and I’m going to go after every rebound,’ ” Tshiebwe said. “When I watching that first game, I never got into a good defensive stance. I told myself I wasn’t going to do that again. If you watched me tonight, I got into a good defensive stance and I was more ready than I was the first game.”

As Tshiebwe’s rebounds began to pile up, the Mountaineers (2-0) also began to play better defense on the perimeter and began to shut down driving lanes on the Panthers (2-2).

“We came out in the second half and started playing more aggressively on defense and used our defense to turn into offense a little,” said WVU forward Emmitt Matthews, who finished with 17 points and eight rebounds. “They had a lot of weapons. They have shooters and they have guys who can get to the basket and they have some bigs who can finish at the rim. We had to make them rush and take bad shots, which I think happened more in the second half.”

Just how much of a difference did the defense make in the second half? Pitt was held to just three field goals and 18 points, as WVU took its slim one-point halftime edge and rolled its lead to as much as 17 points in the second half.

“I think their guards got worn down a little bit,” said Huggins, who improved to 7-7 against Pitt as the Mountaineers’ head coach. “If you went out there and got chased around for 40 minutes and zig and zag and try to get the ball, and then when you get the ball, you try to drive and when you try to drive, somebody comes to help and then you have to bounce it back and throw it to someone else and then you have to get open again. If you had to do that for 40 minutes, you’be be tired, too.”

Pitt’s trio of guards of Trey McGowens, Xavier Johnson and Ryan Murphy came into the game averaging a combined 42 points, but were held to 28 and they shot a combined 9 of 20 from the field.

It was the Mountaineers’ fourth consecutive win against the Panthers — the first time WVU could claim that since Huggins was a senior guard in college.

It was also WVU’s first true road win since Feb. 20, 2018, a span of 633 days.

It also was a game that will make Tshiebwe’s film viewing much better this weekend.

“I’ll probably watch this game at least 10 times,” he said. “But for much different reasons.”