This is going to take a while, for certain, but Bob Huggins sounds like a guy who believes his team will get better once its players get to log some games together. Friday night was not easy, but it wasn’t a loss, and neither of those is bad for this team. Perhaps that explains why the Mountaineers were somewhat content with the come-from-behind win against the team picked to finish sixth in the preseason MAAC poll.

“Tonight was great for us,” WVU point guard Juwan Staten said. “This wasn’t a game we were expecting to be as hard as it was, but it’s good to get as many hard games as you can out of the way. Even though this game was harder than it was supposed to be, a lot of our players grew. When you have a lot of new players, you’re going to have growth every game.”

Staten, the Big 12’s preseason player of the year, and Devin Williams, who had as bizarre a game as imaginable, scored the team’s final 17 points. The defense forced turnovers throughout and held the Hawks to one basket in the final 7:36 to pull away.

Staten scored 10 of his game-high 20 points in the final 4:47, starting with two free throws that put the Mountaineers ahead for good 49-48 after they trailed from the 2:52 mark of the first half onward.

“This is early in the season, and we’ve been bragging on this team all year,” Staten said. “You can’t come out and lose a game early like that. Me being the captain and having a lot of experience kind of being put in that situation before, I felt it was my job to carry the team through it.”