After historic win at Cameron, Pitt’s Blake Hinson savors the view from the top

It’s possible no other player in the history of Cameron Indoor Stadium has ever quite had the view that Blake Hinson had Saturday night, when it was over and he stood over hundreds of frothing Duke students unloading venom in his direction.

In the immediate aftermath of Pittsburgh’s first win at Cameron in just short of 45 years, Hinson leapt onto press row, stared down the Crazies and soaked it all in: Countless middle fingers turned up – in a week when the bird has been in the ACC headlines – and thumbs turned down and mouthfuls of expletives and unrepeatables.

“I didn’t say nothing,” Hinson said. “I just wanted to see what they thought about me.”

And what did they think?

“They don’t like me.”

It was the final flourish to an epic heel performance by the Pitt forward, whose shotmaking did as much to doom the Blue Devils to a historic 80-76 defeat as anything, and didn’t pass up the chance to make sure everyone knew it when it was over.

“This is one of the hardest places to win in the nation,” Hinson said. “So that was just an example of you climbing Mt. Everest and looking at it from up top, saying ‘I did it.’“

This was more of what Pittsburgh expected to be this season, not the team that came into Saturday’s game 1-5 in the ACC having beaten only Louisville, the free square in the middle of ACC bingo. The Panthers were a tough out in several of those games, but they were still down, down and out heading into a place they had never won as a member of the ACC. And Duke, missing Jeremy Roach and Mark Mitchell, fought to the end but was always one play behind.

Hinson set a Cameron record 7-for-7 night from 3-point range on his way to 24 points and a technical foul he earned, he later acknowledged, by trying to get the last word with Kyle Filipowski. Official Ron Groover got it instead.

That was the first salvo in his war with the Cameron Crazies, who had been chanting “T him up!” as the players were separated, and Hinson egged them on. Just as everything appeared to have calmed down, Hinson said something and Groover heard it.

Those extra free throws helped Duke pull back a Pitt lead, something the Blue Devils did time and time again as Jared McCain all but dragged Duke to the finish, until Jaland Lowe’s dagger 3-pointer with 43 seconds left essentially put the game away. Even then Duke didn’t go quietly, Filipowski hitting a late 3 of his own to prolong proceedings. The game was like that: full of noisy and fiery eruptions, quelled only by an endless monitor review of a late out-of-bounds play that created a sort-of second intermission, like a hockey game.

It was heated and it was close and, for Pitt, it was both gratifying and historic, and all of that both contributed to and culminated in Hinson’s leap onto the table to confront the home fans — a throwback to Georgia Tech’s Jarrett Jack at the Greensboro Coliseum in the 2004 ACC tournament — and be confronted in return.

“Oh man,” Hinson said. “It’s not for the light-hearted, the things I saw and heard.”

That made it the second memeable moment of the ACC’s week. N.C. State guard DJ Horne’s surreptitious double middle fingers, caught on camera late in the Wolfpack’s win over Wake Forest on Tuesday, summoned an immediate apology afterward and an ACC reprimand. Fine: Done and dusted.

But between the two of them, Horne and Hinson, they injected a little frisson into a sport — and a long season — that’s more of a grind and less of a wild ride than it used to be. Maybe people would pay more attention to college basketball before March if it were more like this.

No one’s asking for blood to be spilled — as it so often has, here and elsewhere in the Triangle — but a little competitive fire that spills over can only help a sport (and a conference) that’s struggling to retain its footing in a football world. The ACC was built on rivalries and there are precious few of those left, and even the ones that still exist have lost a little of their steam.

So: A little personality goes a long way. These wins matter. If you can get one, live it up. Ask forgiveness, not permission. It had been decades since Pittsburgh won at Duke. Decades from now, Hinson’s last stand may be all anyone remembers from this one.

“It’s nothing but respect,” Hinson said of his leap. “I mean, you can get mad at it. That’s just your opinion. But the way I look at it is, respect to them.”

The people who are going to clutch their pearls can clutch them, but you can’t have true heroes without real villains. In Hinson’s case, he was both.

Never miss a Luke DeCock column. Sign up at tinyurl.com/lukeslatest to have them delivered directly to your email inbox as soon as they post.

Luke DeCock’s Latest: Never miss a column on the Canes, ACC or other Triangle sports