If ever there was a time when Pitt coach Jamie Dixon needed a lift from his bench it was Monday night at West Virginia. A closely officiated game led to several Pitt starters getting into foul trouble.

Three starters picked up two fouls in the first half. Freshman center DeJuan Blair had to sit for 13 minutes and senior guard Ronald Ramon for nine. That forced Dixon to turn to his reserves, but as has been the case for much of the Big East schedule, the bench players failed to respond.

There is plenty of blame for Pitt's late-season struggles. The defense has been horrid and is at the top of the list. The lack of rebounding and outside shooting surely deserves blame, too.

But an overlooked factor in the slide has been the lack of productivity from the bench, previously a strong suit for Pitt teams that competed for Big East championships.

Tyrell Biggs has been a major disappointment in recent games. He had the opportunity to play 21 minutes in the 76-62 loss to West Virginia and only had three points and three rebounds.

Biggs, a 6-foot-8 junior who was supposed to be a valuable bench player, has scored 11 points and pulled down 10 rebounds in the past five games. He has scored in double figures just once in Pitt's 15 Big East games. In those 15 games, Biggs is averaging 4.9 points and 3.9 rebounds .

Biggs, a former top 100 recruit, has been the most disappointing of the reserves, but he is not the only bench player who has failed to seize opportunities with more playing time.

Despite scoring seven points against West Virginia, freshman guard Brad Wanamaker, another top 100 recruit, has not performed consistently. He is averaging 2.1 points and 1.2 rebounds per game in conference play. Freshman center Gary McGhee is contributing even less, 1.5 points and 1.5 rebounds.

Redshirt freshman Gilbert Brown, a starter for the first 13 conference games, has assumed the role of the first guard off the bench since Levance Fields returned to the starting lineup, but his play has been wildly inconsistent. Two days after scoring 12 points off the bench against Syracuse, Brown was a non-factor against the Mountaineers, going 1 for 6 from the field and scoring three points in 19 minutes.

"This is a game where we needed our bench," Dixon said. "When you get Sam, DeJuan and Ronald in foul trouble ... we didn't make any shots off the bench as the numbers indicate. We'd like to get more out of our bench, and we have at times, but we didn't have it tonight."

Injuries surely have affected the way Dixon has had to utilize his reserves. Mike Cook's season-ending knee injury forced Brown into a starting role until Fields returned. Fields' injury forced Benjamin into a starting role. Benjamin earned the right to remain in the starting lineup once Fields returned, but in an ideal world, Benjamin is a valuable player off the bench and not a starter.

Fields was asked after the West Virginia game if the starters had to much pressure on them.

"There's no pressure on the starters," he said. "We just have to get it done on defense. We're preaching it, but we're not doing it. When we figure it out on defense the better we'll be overall as a team."

The lack of bench productivity has played a role in the defense faltering because it has forced Dixon to play his starters major minutes in closely contested games. Pitt is using a seven-player rotation in many games when foul trouble is not an issue, and the starters, who have proven to be average defenders at best, are getting worn down.

The one positive for the Panthers is that they have almost a week to prepare for the regular-season finale Sunday afternoon against DePaul, a game that they must win if they don't want to enter the Big East tournament with doubts about their NCAA tournament hopes.

"We don't know where [the West Virginia loss] leaves us," Benjamin said. "We have to get a win. That's all we know."