Hodge Talks WVVU Basketball Maturity, Closing Out Close Games

WVU basketball head coach Ross Hodge broke down the team’s win over Arizona State Wednesday night, complimenting the team’s growth and ability to adjust as the game goes on.

Senior guard Honor Huff has been the leading scorer for WVU this season while also leading the nation in three-pointers made. However, Arizona State kept him in check Wednesday, limiting him to five points.

Despite a slow night from Huff, senior guard Treysen Eaglestaff led the way with 23 points with several key plays down the stretch from other Mountaineers. Hodge gave credit to the team and highlighted how Huff opens up opportunities for other players.

“All year long, I mean, Honor’s probably been our most consistent player on a night in night out basis, but all those other guys have had big games in, in big moments, you know, and again, the more ways you can win a game, probably the better,” Hodge said in the postgame press conference. “And he gets so much attention that that opens up the floor for other people and those guys like stepped into those moments really well.”

WVU overcame a 23-11 first-half deficit and cut the ASU lead to just two points at halftime. Prior to outscoring ASU 40-26 in the second half, Hodge credited the team’s maturity and defensive adjustments at halftime.

“We have a mature group. Those guys have played a lot of basketball. We haven’t played a lot of basketball together, but collectively they’ve played a lot of basketball… It wasn’t like an aggressive tone or you didn’t really have to challenge ’em that much. It was as, we didn’t feel like we had played very well in particular defensively,” Hodge said.

Wednesday’s win put WVU at 4-2 in the Big 12. After gutting out some close wins in the conference slate, Hodge said the team has improved at closing out games, but needs to improve during certain stretches.

“Some of those games earlier in the year that we weren’t able to finish that we played really well for long stretches and then just didn’t have the closing punch,” Hodge said. “We’ve kind of flipped it a few times now where, maybe we didn’t play great for stretches of the game, but we were able to finish.”

WVU basketball will play again at 2 p.m. on Saturday when the Mountaineers take on No. 1 Arizona in Tucson.

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