WVU Men’s Basketball Pulls Away From Mercer
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MORGANTOWN - For the most part, Ross Hodge was a man under control Thursday night.
For the second half, anyway.
The first 20 minutes were a different story, as Hodge occasionally threw out a "dang it," that rang throughout Hope Coliseum. He stormed in and out of huddles with a purpose and quickly subbed for players not playing up to their potential.
There was a lot of that early in West Virginia's 75-61 victory against Mercer, as the Mountaineers (3-0) simply looked like a team going through the motions before heading out to Las Vegas next week for the highly-anticipated Players Era 8 tournament.
"He got animated, but it was warranted," was the way WVU forward Javan Buchanan put it after scoring 12 points in the win. "We didn't really come out with the right energy, in terms of physicality. That started with me. Him being animated, that was on us."
Here's the real story, though. As Hodge marched to WVU's locker room at halftime, it would have been easy for him to completely lose his original train of thought and make wholesale changes and strategic modifications.
After all, the little school - Mercer (2-3), located in Macon, Ga. is from the mid-major Southern Conference - was hanging around with a big boy from the Big 12.
Yell, scream, blow things up and go straight to Plan B, no one would have blamed Hodge if that's what he did.
It's not what he did at all.
"I don't think there was anything too crazy involved," said WVU guard Finley Bizjack, who led the Mountaineers with 15 points. "We didn't even have to make a whole bunch of adjustments. We were making them miss on their first shots. We just had to finish with rebounds.
"We talked about being tougher and being more physical basketball players and making the plays we needed to make."
Rather than Plan B, Hodge simply stuck with Plan A ... with strict instructions to execute it better in the second half.
"From a coaching standpoint, you always have your game plans," Hodge said. "You start with: Are you doing what you're supposed to do hard enough and with enough attention to detail. Are you executing what you're trying to do?
"If you're not doing that, then it really is simply, 'Hey, we've got to do this harder. We've got to do this better.' Sometimes you do it with different people."
WVU came out in the second half on a 12-3 run and opened up a 20-point cushion with six minutes remaining in the game.
The Mountaineers also survived star freshman point guard Miles Sadler getting into early foul trouble. He finished with 12 points on 4 of 11 shooting and added six assists.
"I thought he did a good job of keeping himself engaged," Hodge said of Sadler. "He handled it pretty well. I thought it was a good learning experience for him and us. I thought we handled it well."
So, what exactly happened in that first half? Hodge summed it up by WVU simply not being tough enough on the boards and around the rim. Mercer out-rebounded the Mountaineers in the first 20 minutes, 21-20, and kept things pretty even in the paint. WVU finished with just a 32-26 edge in paint points for the game.
"I thought for good majorities of the game, they were the more physical and determined team," Hodge said. "We kind of knew what they were going to do and we just didn't do a good enough job of keeping them off the glass."