Benjamin Powell/The Dominion Post WVU forward Brenen Lorient drives to the basket against Wake Forest on Saturday.

CHARLESTON – Ross Hodge needed a Help Wanted sign hung over the WVU bench Saturday. It would have stood for both the Mountaineers’ offense and defense, as Wake Forest dominated in the second half for a 75-66 victory inside the Charleston Coliseum.

As it always does with Hodge, WVU’s defense is where the story begins, and it was nowhere close to where it needed to be. The Demon Deacons (7-3) shot 51% (29 of 57), the first team to connect above 50% against WVU all season.

Wake Forest sophomore guard Juke Harris was a human dagger. Every time WVU threatened to get back into the game, Harris countered with one of seven 3-pointers that paved the way to his 28 points.

“He’s one of the most improved players in all of college basketball from his freshman to sophomore season,” Wake Forest head coach Steve Forbes said. “He made some big-time shots tonight, and he made them through physicality, too.”

WVU (7-3) got as close as 61-56 with 5:30 remaining in the game. Wake Forest used the final five minutes putting on a pick-and-roll clinic with either Tre’Von Spillers or Omaha Biliew getting dunks.

“I don’t want to discredit (Wake Forest), because they are a good team, but we made a lot of internal mistakes within the team,” said WVU guard Honor Huff, who led the Mountaineers with 24 points. “We tried to make a lot of changes throughout the course of the game, especially towards the end and we just botched them.

“I botched one with Chance (Moore). We were supposed to switch out and they got a slip to the basket. That’s on me. We talked about that right before it happened, so it’s not on the coaching staff. It’s on us. We had a lot of mishaps during the game where we just botched the coverage.”

Wake Forest hit 10 3-pointers and scored 25 points off of WVU’s 17 season-high turnovers.

“There’s a lot of things you can point to,” Hodge said. “We weren’t fundamental enough and got sped up in some different areas. Seventeen turnovers is something for a team that had been a low-turnover team to this point. If you’re going to turn the ball over 17 times and not shoot the ball well, then you have to be elite defensively. We had some moments where we were good, but not good enough in the second half.”

The other side to this loss was WVU’s scoring options had whittled down to just Huff and Moore. Huff’s 24 points came off a school-record 17 3-point attempts in a single game, which surpassed the previous mark of 15 set by Jonathan Hargett, Javon Small and Kerr Kriisa.

Huff made five of those 17 attempts and took 20 shots for the game. Moore added 16 points and took 11 shots. Combined, the duo took 60% of West Virginia’s shots.

Meanwhile, Treysen Eaglestaff didn’t attempt a single one, including passing up a possible lay-up midway through the second half to instead pass the ball. The ball got knocked away for another turnover.

WVU center Harlan Obioha made the first shot of the second half that gave the Mountaineers their only lead after halftime and then never attempted another shot the rest of the game. WVU forward Brenen Lorient also did not attempt a shot in the second half. He was charged with committing six turnovers for the game.

All three starters have been a scoring threat at other points in the season. Against Wake Forest, all three mostly sat and watched from the bench in the second half.

It’s always been my philosophy and it’s always kind of been our identity that even if you’re not shooting the ball well, if you just take care of the ball and execute defensively …” Hodge began. “You can’t do both. You can’t give up 41 points in the second half and turn the ball over and miss shots and miss free throws. You can’t do all of that.”

So, WVU’s options were basically Huff shooting it from deep – one of his threes came from the GoMart logo some 30 feet away – or Moore driving to the basket. It wasn’t nearly enough.

“We thought their main option was to drive it and get fouled or rebound it,” Forbes said. “I thought we did a good job of controlling the big fella (Obioha). It’s knowing your personnel and not getting stretched.

“When Honor Huff starts making those threes, everybody gets stretched and those driving lanes open. I thought we did a pretty good job of staying in those lanes and stripping and ripping.”