Ross Hodge Illustrates the Highs and Lows of West Virginia's Win Against Campbell

The West Virginia Mountaineers (2-0) held off the Campbell Fighting Camels (0-2) Thursday night 73-65.

Head coach Ross Hodge sat with the media following the game and gave his thoughts on the Mountaineers moving to 2-0.

Opening statement

“About what I expected. Again, just watching their two closed-door exhibitions against Davidson and Elon. They scored 95 against Davidson, 104 against Elon. The game against Wisconsin the other night was very similar to this game, really, until the last four minutes of the game. Wisconsin really, really separated them. But in that game, you go back and look, it was 67-62 with about six minutes to go. So that was kind of fully what we anticipated, what we expected.

“Thought our guys did a good job of responding to the game pressure. Which, again, to me, shows that they anticipated it being what it was. If you're not ready for that, if you have a different mindset, or you think, “Oh, this will be easy. We'll run away from them.” Then, when it gets tight, you kind of have that story. I'd look like, oh, man, what's happening? But I thought our response was good.

“I thought we defended well all night; we just fouled too much, which is something else they do well.

“But all in all, I thought we made the plays when we had to, thought one of the bigger plays, and I don't remember the exact timestamp of it, but it was when (freshman forward) DJ Thomas got the offensive rebound and stuck it back in. I thought that was just a huge play. When we were feeling a little bit of game pressure. At that point, we had had some good looks, you know, (senior guard) Honor (Huff) had a great look. (Senior guard) Trey (Treysen Eaglestaff) had some good looks, and there was just a little bit of squeeze. And thought DJ went in there and grabbed that (shot), and ironically, it was his only rebound of the game, but it was a big one, so I have to give them a lot of credit.

“I told our guys, we know we have to keep getting better, but we're certainly not going to ever apologize for winning, and you don't get style points for dubs (wins). So, we'll take it. We'll get better. We'll get a little rest tomorrow and get a little practice, which we also need on Saturday, and then what we also need is another game on Sunday.”

Defensive performance

"I thought the first half, you are in front of your bench, which helps early season defensively because you can, as a staff, communicate with your team. I thought we did a really good job defensively in the first half. In the second half, you know, you get away from your bench a little bit, you get a little fatigued, you get a little spread out, you lose your gap integrity, and you start getting driven. You are a little late on your rotations. And then, like I said, to start the half when we did make them miss, we could not come up with it, which I thought was problematic as well. But a lot of the times, you lose your rebounding position when you are in rotations. So, they drive it, your big guy has to step up to help, they get it up on the window, and now you are having your little guys try to block out the big guys, and we just were not physical enough in that area."

Honor Huff scoring a game-high 23 points

"I thought he made some huge shots down the stretch. What you expect from a senior guard that led the country in threes, you know, made some big ones for us, and stepped to the line and made some big free throws as well. It was good to see him respond in that moment. It was good to see us, as a group, collectively respond to some game pressure."

Opening statement

Defensive performance

Honor Huff scoring a game-high 23 points

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