The past two crowds at the Coliseum combined to be just a little above a sellout crowd. They’ve been rowdy and to an extent they’ve bothered the opponent, but the numbers and the visuals tell a story: Fans are still slow to come back around on WVU basketball.

Not that the Mountaineers don’t understand the hesitation: “I would say it was hard to root for us last year,” Kevin Noreen said.

More and more, though, it seems this is the sort of team — the way it plays, the way its players are — that can spin those turnstiles. And if this was the sort of turnaround the spectators needed, then it was certainly the type of team the head coach needed to get past what happened last season.