The West Virginia Mountaineers fell to the Maryland Terrapins, 90-81, in the first exhibition game of the season.

West Virginia head coach Ross Hodge gave his initial assessment of some of the key issues resulting from the loss.

Opening statement

“Give Coach Williams and his bunch a ton of credit.

“Felt like it was obviously a tale of two halves, and I told our team it couldn't be more on display of how and why you build leads and then how and why you lose leads. And ultimately felt like it was their physicality with Payne and Mills. It was good to see Payne back out there from just a fan standpoint. Know he had a tough injury last year. And then Mills, those returners, just their physicality, their ability to play through our chin and our chest collapses your defense. We couldn't play without the foul.

When we could get them to miss, we couldn't get their rebounds.

“And then as a byproduct of that, your offense is constantly playing against a set defense. We had one turnover in the first half, you have 14 turnovers of the game. Again, 13 turnovers in the second half and end in overtime. Not a recipe for success.”

“But thankful that we got a chance to get out here and do it against a quality opponent. Again, their physicality is real. You feel it, and it's a great learning lesson to reinforce some of the things that we've been talking about.”

“It's not like you're coming out of this with new messaging, just a reinforcement of the messaging and what happens when you play it right and then what happens when you play it wrong. But you got to give them a lot of credit for that as why we played wrong too. So, ton of credit to them. We take away some good, obviously some bad, and great experience and a lot of learning.”

West Virginia outrebounded 48-37, allowing 24 offensive rebounds

“So much of offensive rebounding can also be a byproduct of not being able to keep the ball out of the paint in general with some physicality.

“To start the first four-minute segment out of halftime, I didn't think our ball pressure and our intensity level on defense was good enough. So then you're getting driven. Mills did a good job, Wagner driving the ball. Your defense gets collapsed and now, you're not in great rebounding position to begin with and you're also, again, trying to block out elite level offensive rebounders.

“Then, there's the other times where you just flat out - the game broke you down so bad that a shot went up and you didn't even look to find anybody, which is just, again, you got to reinforce habits and you got to lengthen those habits. It's a great way to learn it. Hopefully you can learn from it, but it's like, ‘hey, when you do it right, this is what happens. When you do it wrong, this is what happens.’

“When you have a lot of success, it's not because you're just so good. It's you executed. When you don't execute, bad things happen.”

WVU bench outscoring Maryland 32-15

“We feel good about our depth. We feel good about having lots of players that can contribute on different nights.

“And as a coach with pretty much a brand-new group, I'm still learning as well. Like, what are the best lineup combinations? Who plays well together?

“It was expected in some ways to be honest because I think that will be a strength of this team is our depth. (junior guard) Martin (Somerville), (senior guard) Seydou (Traore). (Freshman center Amadou) Seini, for his first college basketball game, I thought he played really well off the bench.

“I think we have some more guys sitting over there that didn't get a chance necessarily today that could get a chance soon as well. So, it's more of a reinforcement than a learning, but it was good to see it come to fruition in a real game, in a real environment.”

Learning about this group after competing against a quality opponent

“That's one of the things I was probably looking most forward to… Very rarely - it's more common now but when you when you step onto a floor for the first time and you kind of don't really know exactly what's going to happen in a game situation, there's some excitement there and some anxiety, obviously some nervousness.

“I've seen (senior forward) Brennan (Lorient) play in a Mountaineer uniform. I haven't seen anybody else play. So, you're kind of, on some level, you are learning as much as you are.

“I don’t want to make no mistake about it. You're coaching to win. I mean, there's a scoreboard you want to win. But you are you're learning a lot about your teams in an open setting, which exposes you in a lot of different ways than even in a closed setting.

“I've mentioned this before. I've been part of like closed door scrimmages where you won them and maybe you had like some feeling of excitement walking out of it and you pick up a box score and someone had 10 fouls and you're like, ‘that probably would have impacted the outcome of this game a little bit.’

“The crowd. I though the crowd got into it later in the second half. They made some tough shots. Those are things you can't simulate at all. And you do get to learn a lot. But yeah, there's a ton of learning still going on. There's a lot of learning in our locker room.

“There's a lot of learning on my end. And again, I'm thankful that you get a chance to learn it in an environment against a quality opponent. And you're disappointed you didn't win, but also thankful it doesn't go on your record.”