More or less just past the halfway portion of the conference slate of basketball. It’s time for the latest liveblog and roundtable of Big East bloggers.

Brian Harrison at Orange 44 will be the host once more.

In addition to yours truly, here’s the line-up of participants.

Sean of Troy Nunes is an Absolute Magician;
Brian of Orange 44;
John of Mountainlair;
Dave of FriarBlog ; and
Kevin of TheUConnBlog

The fun starts around 9pm. Stop by and join the fun.

I know. Bad pun. It’s the fact. The crew was hideous. Jay Bilas had the quote of the game, “My ears hurt from all the whistles being blown.”

It was the story on both ends of I-79. Columnists weighed in with the poor officiating often by couching it in how unfair it was for the fans.

But the guy who’s going to have the toughest tape review today is Big East director of officiating Art Hyland. His officials — Karl Hess, Curtis Shaw and Joe Lindsay — had a rotten night. Sure, it’s hard to call a Big East game — any Big East game — because the players are so big, so fast, so strong and so physical. But this was ridiculous. When four of the five best players in the game — Blair and Fields of Pitt and Butler and Alex Ruoff of West Virginia — each have two fouls little more than eight minutes into the game and are on the bench, the fans are the losers.

I still love the comment from Jermaine Dixon, though these refs may not be so nice the next time they see him.

It’s no wonder that Pitt’s Jermaine Dixon, when asked if he and Ruoff were doing a little trash talking in the second half, shook his head and said, “Nah, we were talking about the refs. I’m not going to tell you what we said.”

I think the implication is understood. It was especially frustrating for the WVU side as this little anecdote reveals.

At one point WVU Coach Bob Huggins got upset when backup point guard Will Thomas, who had just entered the game, was called for walking.

Huggins reached the boiling point right there and was going to yank Thomas. He walked from one end of the bench to the other, looking for a replacement. Reaching the far end, he realized he had no one to go in for Thomas, threw his hands into the air in exasperation and walked back to his spot at the other end of the bench.

At another point he yelled out at Hess. Now this a paraphrase, but what the gist of what he said was “It’s all right, Karl, my fault. I really didn’t want my two top scorers on the floor anyway.”

Wouldn’t you just love to know the actual quote? I would.

There was no way not to acknowledge the impact of the refs on the game. To give some credit to the WVU players who talked, they still said the right things.

“You’ve got to play a perfect game to beat them here,” WVU freshman point guard Truck Bryant said. “We weren’t even close to that.”

Alex Ruoff fouled out for just the fourth time in 116 career games. The Mountaineers’ second-leading scorer was joined by the top scorer, Da’Sean Butler, who scored four points and missed 10 of 12 shots.

It was his third game in single digits this season and the fewest points he’d scored since getting just two free throws against Marquette as a freshman … 81 games ago.

“I consider myself a smart player as a senior and I realize I can’t let frustrations carry over to the next play,” said Ruoff, who fouled out with 7:27 remaining and his team down by 13 points. “(Monday) it was tough with every little touch foul, especially with two Big East teams who play physical.

“We did a bad job — myself and other guys — adjusting to the refs and the way they call the game. You can never blame the refs. You’ve got to adjust and we didn’t do that at all.”

Of course, part of the problem was that there was little consistency to the refs. They called a lot of stuff, but it was never clear what or when at times.

“I don’t care how they call the game. I really don’t,” West Virginia coach Bob Huggins said. “As long as they call it the same. I don’t care if they call it tight or loose or whatever, as long as they call it consistently throughout the game.”

Huggins didn’t say it and didn’t even approach saying it, but the inference was unmistakable: that the game was not called the same from start to finish, and that’s why players from both teams got into so much foul trouble. From one possession to the next, what constituted a foul seemed to change.

The difference in how Pitt was able to adjust better was with the point guard play. Levance Fields got back on the court with the foul trouble for a reason.

Fields was whistled for his second foul with 12:53 to play in the first half. But freshman Ashton Gibbs played well off the bench and then Dixon put back in Fields with 5:52 left in the first half. With Fields on the floor, Pitt took a 29-24 lead into the locker room. Dixon’s decision to reinsert Fields went against his conventional wisdom. The sixth-year coach almost never plays anyone in the first half with two fouls.

“I just had a feeling and it worked out,”

It was more than a “feeling,” despite Coach Dixon downplaying it. It was a calculated risk that was needed. Fields can still stretch in the first half. He’s a senior and he was trusted not to make the silly foul on either end. Pitt just could not work the ball inside. Sure they could attack the rim and drive, but they lacked someone who could make the passes to hit guys cutting to the basket or that were around the basket. That was needed.

This game left Da’Shawn Butler a wreck.

For most of this year, Butler has been the most dependable of the West Virginia Mountaineers, a go-to guy for a basket and a go-to guy for a quote, but now in the shadow of a 70-59 defeat to those hated Panthers from up Pittsburgh way, there really wasn’t anything to say.

Butler, instead, sat in the locker room, tears running down his cheeks.

This junior out of New Jersey who had just recently scored 20 points in six consecutive games, had what was unquestionably the worst evening of his Mountaineer career.

In foul trouble throughout, Butler scored but four points. Only once, as a freshman, he scored fewer points, getting two that night.

And never in 97 games at West Virginia, had Butler gone without a single rebound.

For Pitt, this game was a big win because it was another win where the team was able to do it without Blair. Not just that, but once the Pitt players grasped that he wasn’t going to be in too much, they got much better on the boards.

With Blair relegated to 16 minutes, eight points and nine rebounds, the Panthers (22-2, 9-2 Big East) still produced a 39-23 rebound advantage against a West Virginia team that ranks second in the conference in offensive rebounding and fourth in rebound margin.

“We can’t get outrebounded by 16. We just can’t do it and expect to win,” West Virginia coach Bob Huggins said. “Every possession for us is so important because we can’t score enough points in the paint.”

What also makes that number impressive is that Pitt solidly beat them on offensive rebounds. Considering the ‘Eers shot just 40.4% to Pitt’s 48.1% there were a lot more opportunities for them, but Pitt did the better job on both ends.

From a greedy stat perspective, that was the only reason I kind of wished Pitt didn’t go full scrubs in the final couple of minutes. It allowed WVU to make their last two shots, which got them just over 40% (21-52). Otherwise, they would have been held to below 40% shooting which is always a good thing to see.

The defense responding last night was excellent. Especially when the offense continued to click — albeit just in the second half.

Pitt got back to its defensive roots last night and shut down West Virginia, 70-59, at the Petersen Events Center. The No. 4 Panthers (22-2, 9-2 Big East) swept the season series from the Mountaineers (16-8, 5-6) for the second time in the past three seasons and have now won six of the past seven in this rivalry.

“This is something more like an old Pitt game,” senior point guard Levance Fields said. “We still have to work on it. They still shot 40 percent. Our [goal] is to be below 40 percent. We still have to get a couple of percents down to be where we need to be.”

In the second half, Pitt shot 61.5% (16-26). That was outstanding.

The other cynical good news for Pitt on Blair’s bad night, there were 20 NBA scouts there. Blair only had limited time to impress. It had to help Sam Young. He finished with 20 points on 7-12 shooting (plus 6-7 on FTs), 7 rebounds and 3 blocks. He’s been struggling with his shot lately and it has affected his focus, but really does well against the Hoopies.

It helped to have Fields pushing him.

Fields reminded Young of the latitude of the moment, how he needed to bear the burden defensively and on the glass. Most importantly, Fields told Young to trust the system.

“When he gets himself in trouble is when he’s taking bad shots,” Fields said. “Sometimes, he gets away from that. He’s better when he stays within himself.

“He’s a guy who can make tough shots, but within the offense he plays much better. Sometimes, he’s playing kind of by himself, away from the offense, deviating from the offense.”

Finally. I know it’s easy to hate Huggins. I happen to appreciate the honest villain. Plus, he doesn’t care half the time about being nice in what he says.

Huggins made an appeal to fill the Coliseum Friday night. He particularly challenged the students.

“All of this stuff about us having the best crowd–no we don’t,” Huggins said. “You have the best crowd when you show up all the time. If that offends someone then so be it. They show up when they want to show up.”

“We need them. We are fighting like crazy to get into the NCAA tournament. We’ve completely filled up the student section once every two years. It would be great to get those all of those students in there because we need help.”

“Everybody talks about that ‘sixth man.’ You don’t want your sixth man to show up every two years. You want your sixth man to show up every game.”

Now, be fair. They fill up once a year, now that Pitt and WVU have the annual home-and-home.