Pittsnogle at home in West Virginia

[beaverbaseball 10]

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/mensbasketball/bigeast/2005-08-09-wvu-pittsnogle-cover_x.htm

 

 

This is a good article is you like WVU or really even if you live in WV..I like the last sentence of the story!!

 

 

 

By Erik Brady, USA TODAY

MARTINSBURG, W.Va.  Here is some of what Kevin Pittsnogle did this summer: Got another tattoo. Went to the tractor pull at the county fair. Got recognized all over his state.

 

After a busy March while leading West Virginia to the Elite Eight, Kevin Pittsnogle is enjoying his summer break.

By Lisa Nipp for USA TODAY

 

Pittsnogle, 21, was the only native West Virginian on the West Virginia University men's basketball team that went to the Elite Eight last spring, further than any Mountaineers team since favorite son Jerry West's sainted squad reached the NCAA final in 1959.

 

Pittsnogle went from reserve center to cult hero to verb in the space of a few frantic weeks. Wherever he goes this summer, West Virginians say hello, or whisper and point, or wonder behind his back: Just how tall is he?

 

Physically, he's 6-11. Metaphorically, he stands much taller. West Virginia fans love everything about him  the unkempt hair, the scraggly goatee and the deadeye three-point shot that just might be his ticket to the NBA.

 

On SportsCenter, he is the funny-looking kid with the funny-sounding name who launches those long-range rainbow jumpers. In West Virginia, he's the home-state boy who stayed home. And in Martinsburg (population 15,309, not counting his nephew Isaiah, born last week), he's a hometown hero.

 

No, that's not strong enough. He was already a hero in Berkeley County (pop: 85,272) just for playing for WVU. These days he's more like a tall tale come to life  Paul Bunyan in high-top sneakers.

 

"Seems like everybody I don't know knows me," he says, shrugging with a bewildered grin. "They come up to me and say something, or they just stare."

 

The Mountaineers were a big national story during the madness of March, when they fell a whisker short of the Final Four in an overtime loss to Louisville after leading by 20 in the first half.

 

The rest of the country has mostly forgotten. Mountaineers fans can't forget.

 

Erika Blaylock, 22, Pittsnogle's sister, says a passerby at last week's Berkeley County Youth Fair said to her: " 'Do you know who that is? That's Kevin Pittsnogle! Oh my God!' And I'm like, 'Oh, please. Can't we go anywhere anymore?' "

 

When Pittsnogle and his wife, Heather, watched her stepbrother in a Little League game in Union, W.Va., this summer, "It was like an autograph session broke out," says Todd Ellison, Heather's father. "Coaches on both teams asked Kevin to talk to their kids."

 

Pittsnogle could not have foreseen this sort of celebrity. He started fewer than half the games (17 of 35) and played less than half the time (19.3 minutes a game).

 

He was not the leading scorer. (That was Tyrone Sally at 12.2; Pittsnogle averaged 11.9). He was not the heartwarming transfer story. (That was Mike Gansey, who left the shambles of St. Bonaventure for glory at WVU.) He was not the coach's son with the movie-star looks. (That was Patrick Beilein.)

 

But Pittsnogle emerged as the surprise star of a surprise team, the public face of an unlikely underdog run that began with a string of upsets in the Big East tournament that got West Virginia into the NCAA tournament.

 

"A lot of people in the state put him on a pedestal," his wife says. "Some people in that situation would get so cocky you can't stand to be around them. Kevin's not like that at all. He's just really down to earth."

 

Sister act

 

Most 7-footers play in the paint. Pittsnogle likes to range out to the three-point line and fire away, pounding his chest exuberantly after each outlandishly long trey splashes through the nets.

 

How did he learn to shoot like that?

 

"I grew up in a trailer park," he says. "I used to shoot all day on a gravel court. You couldn't dribble because the rocks made the ball go the opposite way. So I would just shoot, you know, all day. We'd go out at 9 in the morning and come back at 9 at night. We never stopped, except to ride bikes and get drinks."

 

Last week he went to the place where the court used to be. It's paved now, but the hoop is gone. His mind drifted back to games with his sister: "She was taller than me then. She could block me."

 

They played a lot of HORSE. They played games with other kids. The rules were dribble at your own risk, which placed a premium on passing  and on an ability to catch-and-shoot. Pittsnogle developed a quick release to get shots over his sister, who is a foot shorter than Pittsnogle these days.

 

That quick-draw jumper, many years later, led to the etymology of Pittsnogle as a verb.

 

"I first heard it when we came back into the locker room after we beat Boston College" in last season's Big East tournament, Pittsnogle says. He scored 17 points, including three of four three-pointers, in a 78-72 upset of top-seeded BC.

 

As Pittsnogle remembers it, teammate Joe Herber said, "Boston College just got Pittsnogled."

 

Justin Turner quickly interrupts. He was the manager on Pittsnogle's high school team, and they are best friends. "What Herber actually said was, 'Boston College was officially Pittsnogled.' Those were his exact words. It's on the highlight tape."

 

Pittsnogle shrugs. "If you need to know anything, Justin knows more than I do."

 

OK, it's a verb. But what exactly does it mean? "You're asking the wrong person," Pittsnogle says.

 

"I can tell you," Turner says. "The definition is: When you're closely guarded and a man is in your face with his hand up and you shoot a 25-footer and you nail it in their face  then they have officially been Pittsnogled."

 

Pittsnogle grins. "Sounds good to me," he says.

 

Laid-back and quiet

 

For a guy whose name is a verb, he doesn't use that many words himself.

 

In that way Pittsnogle takes after his father, also Kevin, a mechanic at a waste management company. His mother, Tammy, coordinator for in-home care for Berkeley Senior Services, talks to everyone  even referees.

 

Once last season she hollered so loud at one ref that he hollered back, asking if she wanted his whistle. Coming back from a timeout, Pittsnogle told the referee that was his mom. The ref apologized. After the game, she did, too.

 

"My dad takes in the game," Pittsnogle says. "My mom gets into the game."

 

She is known in her section as "Momma Pitts." Her husband sits six rows back.

 

"I'm mouthy and loud," she says. "Kevin is laid-back and quiet, like his dad."

 

They are sitting in the living room of their modest three-bedroom house, where they moved in 1994 from the trailer park. The far wall in the living room is covered with photos of brother and sister through the years.

 

Midget, their 6-year-old Chihuahua, frolics with Chancellor, Pittsnogle's beagle puppy. Midget bites if anyone gets too near Junior, as Pittsnogle is known to his mother. Midget gives Heather a free pass, but it took months.

 

Pittsnogle and his wife live in an apartment in Morgantown, next door to the WVU Coliseum, about 150 miles west of Martinsburg. WVU coach John Beilein says he can't remember coaching another married player in his 30 years as a coach.

 

"Heather is good for Kevin," Beilein says. "She's trying to help him be more conscious of his diet." That means cutting down on pizza, his favorite food

 

They married last October, a week before the season began. That seemed awfully young to marry to many of his teammates, but not to Pittsnogle. His mother and sister were 18 when they got married.

 

Pittsnogle and his wife, also 21, are rising seniors. They met through a mutual friend. Each majors in athletic coaching education. They got engaged last summer and originally planned to marry this summer. But when Heather learned she was pregnant, "I kind of asked him to move it up," she says.

 

"I didn't want to be a big, fat bride. For a while he was, 'No, let's wait, I love you, but I want to wait.' But he called me when they were overseas and he said, 'OK, honey, if you want to get married then I want to get married, too.' "

 

That call came when West Virginia was traveling in Europe for six games last August. Heather miscarried shortly after. They decided to go ahead with the wedding.

 

She is pregnant again, due Feb. 2.

 

'I love my state'

 

One of Pittsnogle's tattoos says, "Father/Mother/Sister/Lost Child," in a pattern surrounding the word "Love." He's not sure how many tattoos he has. "Depends how you count," he says, chuckling.

 

Pittsnogle is given to short declarations followed by a quick chuckle. He can laugh at most everything. He knows people think his surname is funny. He knows people outside the state often lampoon West Virginia as a haven for hillbillies and moonshine.

 

Doesn't bother him: Don't shoot until you see the white of their lies.

 

"I don't pay attention to the jokes too much," he says. "I just let them go. The only way you can take it to heart is if it's true. If it's not true, what can you really say?"

 

Pittsnogle even tells something of a West Virginia joke himself. Martinsburg is in the state's eastern panhandle, about midway between Winchester, Va., and Hagerstown, Md. The panhandle, in some respects, is isolated from the rest of West Virginia.

 

Pittsnogle remembers going to the state high school basketball tournament one year.

 

"People would say, 'Martinsburg? Where's that?' And I would say, 'Eastern panhandle.' And they'd say, 'Is that part of West Virginia?' And I'd say, 'We're in the West Virginia state tournament. We've got to be from the state, don't we?' "

 

Pittsnogle laughs at his own story. He laughs a lot and invites you to do the same. Laugh at his surname, if you like, or laugh at his state. But be warned: If you do, he figures the joke's on you.

 

"My family is from West Virginia from way back," he says. "I love my state and I love representing my state on my team. That's all I can really say about that."

 

You have officially been Pittsnogled.

[EH31 2,533]

i love pittsnogle

[goalie 10]

i just like his name. lol

[EH31 2,533]

yea that and he's like 7 foot and can hit 3 pointers like a shootin gard