MORGANTOWN - It wasn't difficult to see how important No. 10 WVU's victory was to the 14,632 crammed into the Coliseum on Tuesday.
The aisles swelled as the host Mountaineers put more and more separation between themselves and the No. 1 Baylor Bears. The crowd cheered as the game turned from a rout into a Logan Routt. In went reserves like the Cameron product, Chase Harler and walk-on James Long.
Finally, the scoreboard clock hit all zeros and the Coliseum floor was flooded with Mountaineer fans. Final: WVU 89, Baylor 68. Sagaba Konate jumped on a table and flexed as all celebrated, singing "Country Roads." Dax Miles joined him on the table and locked arms.
Seriously impressive win for "Press Virginia." A resume-builder for NCAA tournament consideration. Important to the Mountaineer fans. Important to the team.
Yet also important to the program.
You see, that, my friends, is how you create intimidation. That's how "Press Virginia" gains status a la Arkansas' old "40 Minutes of Hell" teams.
You earn respect by turning over the No. 1 team in the nation 29 times. And you gain that intimidation factor as a bonus.
"I hope it does," said WVU's Tarik Phillip. "I really hope it does."
The only sting was ESPN's head-scratching decision to put Kentucky-Vanderbilt on its main station and relegate Baylor-WVU to ESPN2. Not as many folks saw the wipeout. But there are the highlights. There is the hype.
Which will help the Mountaineers. Opponents will be more jittery. Officials will be more used to West Virginia's defense.
"Give a lot of credit to Coach [Bob] Huggins and those guards," said Baylor's Jake Lindsey. " 'Press Virginia' is real. They do a good job scheming and knowing personnel. They come at you in waves and are very aggressive."
Baylor had 16 turnovers in the first half, but WVU only scored 11 points off those. In the second half, though, WVU turned the final points off turnovers into 29.
"They came out, played harder than we did and we got the result we deserved," Lindsey said. "We had a lot of travels, a lot of dead-ball turnovers that weren't even on the press necessarily. It was them speeding us up on the halfcourt. Maybe, when we go back and watch it, we'll see maybe we were too fast physically - or maybe too fast mentally.
"That's part of West Virginia's thing too. You have to be mentally prepared as much as physically prepared scheme-wise."
Bingo. WVU is getting to, well, the nation. Hey Terry Maston, what did you find most troubling about the Mountaineer press?
"How active they were," Maston said. "How in-shape they looked. No one looked tired out there. No one was bending over. They just kept coming, kept coming at us.
"We were down two and they were pressing. We were down almost 30 and they were still pressing. It was relentless."
Is the press all it's cracked up to be?
"Yes," he said with a weak smile. "Definitely."
"It's a fact," said WVU's Esa Ahmad. "We know if we apply enough ball pressure they'll give us the ball. We got a lot of ball pressure from [Jevon Carter] and Tarik and Nate [Adrian]."
The key for West Virginia is turning the opponents' miscues into points.
"We made that a big emphasis in the locker room," Ahmad said. "We had to convert turnovers from the defense and then we pulled away."
Phillip was asked if he's noticed the intimidation factor.
"Definitely," he said. "I'd say that. Some players haven't ever seen this kind of pressure before. The [Baylor] point guard [Manu Lecomte] was a little flustered, I felt, because he's never seen that kind of pressure before. It's different. It's really different."
Phillip laughed.
"I play against it in practice, so I kind of know," he said. "I get flustered."
And slowly but surely the officials are getting used to the tactic. On Tuesday, Baylor had 21 personal fouls and WVU had 20. Different narrative than when this ploy began, right?
"To be honest, Hugs has told us we're going to foul because it's the press," Phillip said. "It's frantic. Everybody is running around. The main thing is [to stay away from] the dumb fouls, the grabbing and reaching we can control. He said as long as we stay away from those, we should be OK."
These days, they are more than OK. On Tuesday, they were flat terrific. It's one of the finest, if not the finest, WVU performance I've seen in the Coliseum.
And not only was it important to the team and fans, it sent a message. It bolstered the intimidation factor.
"I hope," Phillip said. "We let ourselves down against Texas Tech and wanted to come out and show teams we're ready to play. As long as we come ready to play, we're hard to beat."
Nowadays, sometimes even before the game begins.
Contact Mitch Vingle at 304-348-4827 or mitchvingle@wvgazettemail.com. Follow him on Twitter @MitchVingle.