MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — One mark of good teams is finding ways to win when being far from your best.
Perhaps that explains why first-year West Virginia head coach Ross Hodge found so much satisfaction in the Mountaineers’ 59-54 victory against Kansas State on Tuesday night, one in which the home team overcame a lengthy scoring drought in each half to improve to 13-0 at Hope Coliseum.
“This was probably my favorite win,” Hodge said. “It would’ve been easy to say it wasn’t our night, we didn’t have it and none of us could make a shot. To our guys’ credit, they found a way, kept believing and there was no panic.”
The Mountaineers (14-7, 5-3) failed to score for nearly 6 minutes to start the game and suffered through a drought of more than 7 minutes in the late stages.
The latter drought came after Brenen Lorient scored with 10:19 remaining to leave WVU with a 45-41 lead.
WVU then missed its next seven shots and turned it over three times, before getting a follow-up basket from Treysen Eaglestaff with 3:17 to play to cut what been a 49-45 Wildcat advantage in half.
Another second chance on WVU’s next possession led to Eaglestaff’s go-ahead three off the wing with 2:08 remaining.
“You’re kind of seeing Trey’s evolution as a player,” Hodge said. “He was a high level scorer and now he’s finding ways to impact winning when maybe he’s not having his best shooting night.”
After Chance Moore split two free throws, the Mountaineers came up with a key stop and got a triple from Honor Huff to lead by five, though Kansas State (10-11, 1-7) immediately countered with a P.J. Haggerty trey to trail 54-52 with 1 minute left.
Then came the most pivotal sequence of the night, with Eaglestaff following up his miss with a bucket on a play in which he was also fouled. He converted the free throw for a conventional three-point play to give WVU a five-point advantage with 43 seconds remaining.
“They out-toughed us down the stretch,” Wildcats’ head coach Jerome Tang said.
Haggerty answered with a bucket to make it a three-point margin, and the Wildcats got the ball back after Huff missed the front end of a 1-and-1, but Haggerty’s off-balance triple in an effort to tie was well off the mark.
Huff then sealed the verdict by making two free throws with 8 seconds left for the final margin.
Not until Moore got free on a fast break for a dunk 5:49 into the game did WVU score, at which point the Wildcats led, 7-2.
“It was a slow start for both teams,” Huff said. “We were just giving them the ball. Couldn’t get anything going. We were missing shots. I got pulled out early. It was about maintaining focus as a group.”
K-State’s largest advantage was 13-5 after a David Castillo triple, one that Tang felt could and perhaps should have been a good bit more.
“Each guy was trying to make their own play. I felt if we’d have kept sharing it like we did to start, instead of being up eight, we maybe could’ve been up 14,” Tang said.
Sure enough, after WVU managed five points over its first 17 possessions, the Mountaineers came to life offensively. Huff led the charge by making four treys over a stretch of 5:01, the last of which allowed WVU to lead by eight.
“We had one stretch where Huff made four threes without a dribble and the scouting report was to make him dribble,” Tang said. “We can’t have those kind of errors. We’re not good enough to overcome those.”
Eaglestaff accounted for the next bucket to make it a 10-point game, though the Wildcats were back to within six at halftime despite Haggerty, the Big 12’s top scorer, being held scoreless on 0 for 7 shooting over the first 20 minutes.
“You feel good about it, but you’re a little nervous about it, because you’re only up six,” Hodge said. “You’ve done a really good job on him, but you know he’s a great player you can’t hold down for two halves.”
WVU gained its second 10-point lead at 34-24 when Lorient scored in the paint 2:45 into the second half, but the Wildcats got treys on successive possessions from Haggerty and Nate Johnson to draw back to within four.
The Wildcats’ first lead of the second half came at 47-45 on Johnson’s fast break layup and neither team scored for the next 4-plus minutes.
Huff scored a game-high 17 points to go with eight rebounds, while Eaglestaff scored 12 and led all players with nine boards.
Lorient overcame two fouls in the first 6:29 to finish with 10 points and six rebounds.
“His response was incredible,” Hodge said. “Was proud of him for not letting his early foul trouble derail his entire game.”
Haggerty scored 16 points on 6-for-19 shooting and was limited to two free-throw attempts. He entered averaging 23.4 points on better than 48 percent shooting.
“The coaches came in with a really good game plan,” said WVU guard Jasper Floyd, who was on Haggerty for much of the matchup. “They showed us his strengths. As a group, we did a great job not allowing him to play to his strengths.”
Castillo added 15 points and Johnson contributed 13 in defeat.
Taj Manning’s nine rebounds led KSU, but the Mountaineers won the board battle 38-31 and had 15 second-chance points to KSU’s four.
