MORGANTOWN — A tough challenge awaits at the Petersen Events Center. The question will be whether it will be WVU or the Pitt men’s basketball team that is ready for the challenge.

The jury may be out on that one, at least that’s the story both coaches tell.

“Anytime you go into your first road game and it’s a really good opponent like Pitt and it’s a rivalry game, you’re going to be really tested,” WVU head coach Darian DeVries said. “It’s something you can’t really prepare for until you get into that situation and that environment and see how your guys react.”

WVU STATISTICS

Pitt coach Jeff Capel, who won his first Backyard Brawl match last season with an 80-63 victory in Morgantown, is also publicly considering how his players will meet the challenge.

“We know it’s going to be a lot different here on Friday,” Capel said after the Panthers’ 83-64 victory over Gardner-Webb on Monday. “The level of competition, the level of talent will increase. We understand all this. “We’re excited to see where we stand against this level of competition.”

What we do know is that WVU (2-0) will travel to Pittsburgh on Friday at 8 p.m. with 12 scholarship players and a new coaching staff, none of whom have been a part of this rivalry series.

Pitt (3-0), meanwhile, remains bullish on Capel’s restructuring of the Panthers program.

It was only two years ago that Capel found himself on the hot seat after finishing his fourth straight losing season with the Panthers.

The team is 49-23 since then and has a balanced offensive team with four players averaging double figures this season, and the Panthers are fourth in the ACC averaging 87.3 points per game.

“When you look at them, it looks like they knew exactly what they were going to get,” DeVries said of Pitt. “It’s up to you to try to stop this. “This is hard to do.”

Neither team has been tested to this point; WVU’s 75-69 victory over UMass last week was the closest thing we had to any upset. The Mountaineers took an 18-point lead at one point in the second half and held the lead for nearly 36 minutes.

The margin of victory in Pitt’s three wins is 24.7 points.

The Panthers enter the game with their best weapon in senior guard Ishmael Leggett.
The 6-foot-2 guard leads Pitt in both points (19.7) and rebounds (8.3).

“We know this is going to be a dogfight,” Leggett said. “We think we are ready for a dogfight in the last three games. “We felt for each other and now it’s time to put all the pieces together and do what we do best.”

But the Panthers also have a combination of guards who will be a threat in Jaland Lowe and Damion Dunn from Houston. They are playing with 30 points and 7 assists per game.

“They have more balance and more talent than anything WVU has seen in their first two games,” DeVries said. “It has dimensions. They have speed. They have skills. They’re a pretty complete team.”

WVU will respond with a defense that has been the story of the season to this point.

That defense held a 21-0 lead to start the season-opening win against Robert Morris and then faced a physical challenge against a gritty UMass team.

Neither team shot better than 28.6% from 3-point range against the Mountaineers, but this latest Brawl could end up being more of a track meet than a long-distance HORSE game.

“I don’t think you ever know how to play a game, but I know they like to go out and run. We love to go out and run,” DeVries said. “I definitely predict both teams will want to compete. If the defenses allow us to do that, we’ll see.

“They are very aggressive in transition and have multiple players putting a lot of pressure on the basket. “I think what makes them hard to stop is how balanced they are.”