MORGANTOWN — Ross Hodge likes to coach basketball.

He likes to coach hard. He coaches a physical game, a technical game, a defensive game.

The new West Virginia coach succeeded wherever he’s been but where he’s been you don’t often read about it or see it on SportsCenter.

His move from North Texas to West Virginia is not really from north to west but directionally it is straight up and his debut on Sunday afternoon in the Hope Coliseum carried a message with it and that is that there’s still a lot of work to do before he takes on the Big 12.

The opponent was the Division II team from Wheeling and the final score of 80-54 indicated that they took care of business as expected, but they did so because they had a large size differential inside that they won’t see when they get down to business.

The big guy, Harlan Obioha, stood even taller than his 7 feet with 18 points and eight rebounds while Brenen Lorient, all 6-9 of him, scored 14 points, but they weren’t really challenged inside like they will be when conference play comes around.

What did Obioha like best about his performance as he debuted in the Coliseum.

“That we won,” he answered. “I don’t look at that other stuff.”

The result was Obioha made 8 of 9 shots and Lorient 7 of 9. That’s 15 of 18 shots, which is 83.3% shooting.

It isn’t going to be like that later and the rest of the Mountaineer roster made only 13 of 37 shots, which is 35.1%, and this is a team that figured with Honor Huff and Treysen Eaglestaff to be able to put the ball in the basket.

In the scrimmage against Maryland the team hit 20 3s, just 6 in this game with Huff and Eaglestaff each taking 7 3s and Huff making 2 and Eaglestaff just 1.

The other night, in winning a 3-point shooting contest in the Ballin’ at Woodburn, Huff made 12 straight 3s at one point.

“Honor may have used all of his bullets the other night at Woodburn,” Hodge said.

“They weren’t hitting today but that’s going to happen,” Lorient said. “When that happens, we have to do the little things better like rebound or block out or hit the open man in transition so as the game goes on, they’ll heat up.”

“Coach always says be ready because people aren’t going to have their best game every night,” Obioha added. “Just keep doing what you’re doing and not panic. We got two of the five best shooters in the country on our squad so nine out of 10 times they are going to be shooting well.”

You don’t, however, always come out with a quiver full of arrows, so in a strange way this was good for WVU to be able to find a way to survive without bombing from the outside.

“We shared the ball and did a good job of using our advantage, which was inside play,” Hodge said.

It helped, too, in the 3-point shooting that freshman Jayden Forsythe, a prize recruit, came out and hit 3 of 4 from long range, even banking one in.

“He’s an incredibly hard worker and was one of the best shooters in the nation coming out of high school,” Hodge said, noting that he’s a kid who likes to be pushed.

“I might get on him but after practice he’ll come over and says ‘Keep coaching me hard,'” Hodge said.

He also said that he tells him “You don’t have to worry about that.”

There just wasn’t the kind of dominance and while the defense was solid, it didn’t have the presence of the old Press Virginia defense, but, of course, the situation was different and it’s still early in putting this team together.

“We still have a lot of room to get better,” Hodge declared.