I think we probably assumed the 30 or so minutes Bob Huggins spent behind closed locker room doors Monday night was spent lecturing and probably raising the voice one or two times, that the postgame press conference would be — and was — dominated by talk of the officiating and the two technical fouls.

Yet the players provided a different picture and gave us the idea it wasn’t so hostile in the locker room and Huggins didn’t really want to talk about the whistles and seemed more interested in going down another road he never got to travel.

Maybe it was procedural and he was just trying not to get himself or his team in more, trying not to sound sour, but maybe he genuinely wanted to express another emotion.

In his spot on the radio broadcast between the locker room powwow and the meeting with the media, Huggins showed significant remorse and wondered if his team feels the same.

“I don’t know if they know what they mean to this state,” he said, just as play-by-play voice Tony Caridi was trying to sign off on the post-game show. “I told them in there. You have a chance to be special. This club may have, could have, should have …”

His voice trailed off for a moment, but he was no longer talking to the radio audience, but back there again with his team, the words aimed straight to them, even though they could not hear them now.

“Very few people have a chance to be special, particularly in West Virginia,” Huggins said. “Pittsburgh had great basketball, but it was not the Steelers. Cincinnati had great basketball when I was there, but it was not the Reds.”

Ah, but West Virginia. It has one thing.

“We have a chance to represent this state and bring so much pride and joy,” Huggins said.