MORGANTOWN — If nothing else, Ross Hodge knows how to keep things interesting in these normally ho-hum days of November in college basketball.

“We’ve played 80 minutes of basketball, and we’ve led for, like, 79 minutes,” the WVU men’s head coach said Thursday, after the Mountaineers held off Campbell 73-65 inside the Hope Coliseum. “But, we’ve felt game pressure.”

Maybe a bit too much. WVU (2-0) led for the entire 40 minutes against the Fighting Camels (0-2), but its lead was just 64-60 with 90 seconds remaining. In the opener, WVU defeated Mount St. Mary’s by 16 points, but led by only six with 6:23 remaining.

In those final 90 seconds against the Camels, WVU forward Brenen Lorient scored on a thunderous dunk coming out of a timeout, went 3 of 4 from the foul line and came up with a huge blocked shot to help the Mountaineers preserve the win.

WVU guard Honor Huff led the way with a game-high 23 points and the Mountaineers saw five players score in double figures, but they also saw a scrappy Campbell team go toe-to-toe with them.

“They came in here and got in our face,” is the way Huff put it. “Credit to them, they played really hard.”

Hard enough for the Camels to come away with a 40-36 rebounding edge. The more telling statistic may have been Campbell outscoring WVU in the paint, 34-26.

“That’s what they do and that’s part of their philosophy,” Hodge said of Campbell. “They can drive the ball at multiple positions. They get you spread out. I thought we guarded more like we were supposed to in the first half, but fouled a little too much.

“In the second half, I thought we got spread out and they were able to drive it on us.”

There were positives on the WVU side, too. The Mountaineers held the Camels to just 2 of 14 (14.3%) from 3-point range and Campbell was held to 35.2% (19 of 54) shooting overall.

Lorient’s play down the stretch for WVU may have saved the day.

He teamed up with WVU point guard Jasper Floyd on a pick-and-roll play. Once he hauled in Floyd’s pass, the 6-foot-9 forward took a quick dribble, two quick monster steps and one-hand flushed it through the rim.

The moment came after a WVU timeout with 1:15 remaining. It gave WVU a 66-60 lead and forced Campbell head coach John Andrzejek to call a timeout of his own.

“It just kind of depends on the flow of the game and where the mismatches are, but a lot of the times, I’ll get coming-out-of-timeout plays,” said Lorient, who finished with 12 points, nine rebounds and five blocks. “I think I’m the option a lot of times, but we’ve got real shooters and whoever is hot at the moment is going to get the ball.”

WVU guard Treysen Eaglestaff also showed offensive improvement. After being held to one point in the opener, he came back and finished with 12 points and six rebounds. The senior said he’s been looking for a balance between still finding his shot, while exerting more energy on defense that he’s used to.

“The biggest thing for me right now is we’re getting better,” Eaglestaff said. “Playing this kind of defense wasn’t something I was used to right away. I felt it in our first scrimmage against Maryland, that’s when it kind of hit me. I was like, ‘Wow, your legs are getting tired when I shoot.’ That’s something I’ve been working on in practice. The defensive aspect of it is you have to play harder but that’s winning basketball.”

WVU will now move on to its third game over the first five days of the season, when it hosts Lehigh at 3 p.m. Sunday. The Mountain Hawks (1-1) have already faced a big-time Big 12 team in a 75-57 loss against No. 2 Houston.

If it ends up being another contest where the Mountaineers are forced to make some plays down the stretch, you won’t hear any complaints from Hodge.

“I’m certainly never going to apologize, because winning is hard,” he said. “All you have to do is look around the country and you’ll see (upsets). So, certainly not going to apologize for winning.

“We know we have to get better. We know we’re far from a finished product.”