Jim Bolla, the starting center on Pitt’s 1973-74 team that won a school-record 22 consecutive games, died Friday night.

Bolla, a graduate of Bishop Canevin High School and a Crafton native, was 70.

He was diagnosed with cancer in 2017, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Bolla, who later became a successful women’s coach at UNLV, was part of the 1973-74 Pitt team that was the school’s first to advance to the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament. Six of the Panthers’ top eight scorers that season grew up in Western Pennsylvania. The team finished 25-4 and was ranked in the final Associated Press poll (16th) for the first time in school history.

Overall in his four-year Pitt career from 1971-75, Bolla averaged 3.3 points and 3.5 rebounds per game, but he was known for bringing toughness to the court.

“He was a great teammate,” said Kirk Bruce, who played on that 1973-74 team and later served Pitt for 13 years as women’s basketball coach and later as associate athletic director. “If you needed help on the floor or off the floor, he was the big guy you could depend on. If you needed someone to help you get over a screen, he would try his best to take the guy’s head off for you. If he thought a guy was messing with you in a game, he’d be the one to come over and say something to the guy and tell him to lay off.”

During a game against Niagara in 1975, Bolla took it upon himself to stand up to what he considered a cheap shot on one of his teammates. When Bolla knocked the offending player to the floor, Niagara coach Frank Layden, who later coached the Utah Jazz in the NBA, glared at him in what the Review-Journal described as a “threatening manner.”

After the game, according to the newspaper, Bolla told reporters, “I looked at him and said, ‘Don’t cross over that line, or you’re next.’ ”

Bolla was instrumental in helping Pitt upset Marquette, 65-58, on Dec. 18, 1974, at Fitzgerald Field House. The season prior, Marquette had advanced to the NCAA championship game before losing to N.C. State, the team that had eliminated Pitt. Bolla converted seven of eight late-game free throws to secure the victory.

In author Sam Sciullo Jr.’s book “100 Years of Pitt Basketball,” coach Buzz Ridl said the game was Bolla’s “finest hour.” Pitt never lost a home game in Bolla’s final two seasons.

“He knew the game, and he knew how to teach the game,” Bruce said.

After his Pitt career, Bolla coached the UNLV women’s team from 1982-96, winning a record 300 games with 11 20-victory seasons. Under Bolla’s guidance, UNLV played in seven NCAA Tournaments, won four Big West regular-season championships, five conference tournament titles and rose as high as No. 2 in the AP poll during the 1989- 1990 season. He was named Big West Coach of the Year three times.

He also coached the Hawaii women’s team for five seasons. His overall record as a head coach is 364-200. Before his time at UNLV, Bolla was an assistant on Pitt’s men’s team from 1976-1979 and for one season with the women’s squad.

He is survived by his wife, Dallas, and daughter Sasha, who played volleyball at DePaul.

Bolla, who also suffered from a heart ailment, was determined to attend all of Sasha’s matches, no matter the circumstances of his health, according to the Review-Journal.

“I told the doctors to open me up and get the heart done,” the newspaper reported a conversation with his doctor. “Or, I would go to YouTube with a can opener and figure it out myself, but I wasn’t missing watching her.”

Bolla is the second player from the 1973-74 team who has died in the past 12 months. Guard Tom Richards died in 2021.

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