WVU Honor Huff goes up for one of his 7 threes as Lafayette defenders attempt to block. - Ron Rittenhouse

MORGANTOWN — The first one came so early that people were still making their way to their seats on Monday inside the Hope Coliseum.

By the time Honor Huff was finished, he had given plenty of reasons — eight of them to be exact — for everyone to take notice.

Huff connected on eight 3-pointers, finishing one behind Alex Ruoff’s school record set in 2008, as the WVU men’s basketball team beat Lafayette 81-59.

“I didn’t know,” Huff said about getting near WVU history. “I didn’t know until I was on the bench and I heard the fans screaming, ‘You need one more.”

Turns out, no one on the WVU bench knew Huff was so close to history.

“I didn’t know that,” said WVU head coach Ross Hodge. “If I had known that, I probably wouldn’t have taken him out. Once you take him out, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to put him back in for a stat. I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself putting him back in and then he sprains an ankle or something.”

WVU (5-0) remained undefeated on the season, making Hodge the first WVU rookie men’s hoops coach since Fred Schaus in the 1954-55 season to win his first five games at the school.

You would think that would be it for the history lesson, but there was one more.

That one came from WVU forward D.J. Thomas, who played 28 minutes and scored 25 points on 11 of 17 shooting.

Thomas is a mountain-sized young man at 6-foot-9 and 225 pounds, but is but a freshman. His career game was the most by a WVU freshman since Emmitt Matthews destroyed Texas Tech in the 2019 Big 12 tournament with 28 points.

The WVU single-game record for a freshman is 29 points, set by both Warren Baker and Aundrae Davis.

“It’s just having the mind set of being ready,” Thomas said. “The guys coming off the court have been putting in work, so I have to keep up that production level.”

Getting back to Huff, a transfer from Chattanooga who led the nation with 131 3-pointers last season, the amazing part of his night was he didn’t need a high volume of shots to close in on the record.

He made his eight threes on just nine attempts. Maybe even more amazing is that Huff hit his eighth 3-pointer with 11:23 remaining in the game and then didn’t attempt another shot the rest of the game. Hodge pulled him out of the game at the 3:59 mark, with the Mountaineers leading 68-52.

“It was about time,” Huff said of his hot shooting. “It felt good to see a couple go in right away. I think I’ve struggled to start these past couple of games. Once you get a couple to drop, it’s like there’s no rim. Then, I really don’t see anything.”

He definitely didn’t see where he was standing on the floor on some of his attempts, a couple of his makes may have broached 30-feet away.

“I see it every day. If I didn’t see it in practice, it would make me nervous,” Hodge said. “I’ve seen it from June 1 until now. He does it in practice. He makes tough shots. He works incredibly hard on his game. When he shoots it, I think it’s going in. I’m surprised when it doesn’t go in.”

That was likely the thought of Leopards defenders in the second half. Lafayette (1-4) had seen enough of Huff’s shooting that they began face-guarding him. So, for his final seven minutes of game action, Huff basically stood in the corner and became a decoy of sorts.

His first half, though, was something else. A couple of his threes came off a pump fake that got a Lafayette defender into the air, allowing Huff to slide over and take an open shot.

A few of them Huff connected on while off-balanced, because he was hit on his arm during his shooting motion.

“How many (threes) did I take? Nine, so I felt like I was hit on six of them,” Huff said. “I turned and was talking to the ref about it, but he wasn’t hearing it.”

One of his 3-pointers had to have been from at least 28 or 29 feet out. WVU point guard Amir Jenkins had the ball in transition. He stopped and quickly turned around and pitched the ball back to Huff, who nailed it to give WVU a 30-18 lead with 4:18 left in the first half.

“I’ll be honest, I don’t know how far I’m out,” Huff said. “When I’m in a mode like that, I don’t know where I’m at. I just throw it up to be honest.”