MORGANTOWN — The bar has been set now for the WVU men’s basketball team. Identities have begun to form. Trends have been set.

No longer is this just a collection of new players who are coming together for first-year coach Ross Hodge. The Mountaineers (4-0) are now at the beginning stages of building expectations.

All of that is courtesy of WVU’s 71-49 whitewashing of rival Pitt last week, in which the Panthers became the latest victim of Hodge’s defensive mentality.

“They really made things difficult for us,” Pitt head coach Jeff Capel said after the game. “Ross has done a heck of a job so far, especially in establishing an identity on the defensive side.”

While it still may be early in the college hoops season, here’s what WVU has accomplished so far:

— The Mountaineers are sixth in the nation in points allowed, giving up an average of 53.8 per game.

— WVU is 47th in the country in opponent’s field-goal percentage. No opponent has yet to reach 40% against the Mountaineers. Pitt was held to 37.7%.

It would seem likely WVU’s numbers will improve after today’s 7 p.m. game against Lafayette inside the Hope Coliseum, but that may not exactly be the case. The Leopards (1-3) have taken losses against St. Joseph’s, Texas and Cornell, but have shot at least 40% or better in all four of their games.

Lafayette leading scorer Caleb Williams (17.5 ppg) has scored at least 15 points in every game, including 20 against Texas and he’s connecting on 40% from 3-point range.

Those numbers will certainly catch the eyes of WVU’s defenders, who rank 26th in Ken Pomeroy’s national defensive ratings.

“We held (Pitt) below 50,” WVU guard Honor Huff said. “That’s a big thing (Hodge) always harps on. I think we did a great job on the boards. The effort and the defensive intensity we played with, of course, we’re going to have to keep that going. If we keep that going, I think we can halt a lot of teams from doing what they want to do.”

WVU’s best defense came in stretches against Pitt, the longest one being the end of the first half and the start of the second half. In the final eight minutes of the first half, Pitt made just 1 of 9 attempts and scored four points. Over the first five minutes of the second half, the Panthers were just 1 of 7 with two points.

“We started that second half and were locked in defensively,” WVU point guard Jasper Floyd said. “I think there was a point where they didn’t score for the first four minutes of the second half.”

WVU’s start to the second half against Pitt was especially pleasing to Hodge, who had previously not liked the way the Mountaineers had performed coming out of halftime.

“Unfortunately, we’ve been in this situation in pretty much every game we’ve played dating back to our closed-door scrimmage,” Hodge said. “We’d have a couple-possessions lead and we didn’t start the half great. I thought we started that half great and extended the run.”

Note

Today’s game marks the final game WVU guard Chance Moore must sit out to meet NCAA eligibility requirements for the season. He will be eligible to play when the Mountaineers travel to Charleston, S.C. on Friday to play Clemson in the first round of the Charleston Classic.

“He’s been involved in secondary inter-squad scrimmaging and he’s been getting extra conditioning in,” Hodge said of Moore, who averaged 13.0 points and 6.5 rebounds at St. Bonaventure last season. “He’s been a regular practice participant. You have him in there like you would whether he was playing or not playing.

“The Pitt game and the Mount St. Mary’s games kind of had hard dates, but the Campbell game and the Lafayette game we kind of squeezed in there with the intention of getting those five games out of the way as quickly as we possibly could.”