Man, this is the second time in a week that we saw a basketball version of a rivalry take a turn for the worst. First it was the Holy War on the hardwood, now it’s the Backyard Brawl. With a packed house of 15,419 — third most ever at the Coliseum — things got rowdy in Morgantown. West Virginia went wire-to-wire for the easy 70-51 win but there were two notable moments of tension. One was when the fans started throwing stuff on the court and the other was when a mini-brawl broke out. Check out Bob Huggins addressing the crowd after they started throwing crap on the court:
In case you can’t watch the video, here’s what Huggy-bear said:
“Hey, don’t throw anything on the floor. You could hurt someone. You could hurt one of the players. That’s stupid. If you see someone throw something on the floor point them out. Throw ’em out.”
I’m glad Huggins set a good example and tried to diffuse the problem. That’s probably much easier to do when your team is winning the game — by a comfortable margin no less. If that wasn’t embarrassing enough, things got worse when later in the game, one of Pitt’s assistants was pelted in the face by a coin.
