West Virginia Mountaineers head coach Ross Hodge wouldn't be surprised if a portion of the programs's fan base checks the final score of Thursday night's 59-54 road win against Cincinnati with a bit of surprise.
"There are going to be people in the morning that are like, 'they won that game? I turned that off and went to sleep,'" Hodge said following the win.
It would be a fair response for someone to have after watching the first 25 minutes of action and watching WVU look as dismal as they have all season on the offensive end as they fell behind by as many as 14 points.
"Just about everything I didn't like what I saw, if we're being honest," Hodge said about the game's first half. "Maybe I don't talk about it. But i thought we were a step slow, there were some scouting report mistakes, and we just couldn't get into a rhythm offensively."
WVU Basketball Digs Deep For a Come-From-Behind Win
But by the end of the night, things changed. part of it was an Honor Huff explosion that saw him score 14 consecutive points for the Mountaineers to will his team back into the game. But he was far from the only person making plays, and Hodge was proud of how his team responded down the stretch.
"You just have to give our guys credit. I didn't yell or throw or berate at halftime. You get about three of those a year and I think I've used about one and a half. I just told them the truth," Hodge said. "And the a lot of people made a lot of plays [in the second half]."
Part of that was his team's ability to understand the game was going to be a battle and not get too worried or too down on themselves as the deficit widened earlier in the night. Hodge said that before the game began, he talked about how difficult he expected the game to be to his team to get them prepared, and he felt as if that speech left an impact on the team during the slow start.
"These guys are too good defensively, they're 11-2 in this building for a reason. It was always going to be hard. You have to embrace that," Hodge said about his pregame message to the team. "It wasn't going to be a 'it feels good and there's a ton of space' type of game."