MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - There’s no such thing as a moral victory. There just isn’t. Anyone who tries to smile at you after a defeat and tell you it will all be for the best has not yet come to terms with the reality of the loss. In each of its first three conference losses, the WVU men’s basketball team said there was no place for moral victories in their failed comeback attempts.

A loss is a loss and each one hurt just as much as the last. That is, until the Pittsburgh game.

With all the pain and suffering this team exhibited after its other losses, there was no comparison to the way they felt after giving away that game to the Backyard Bullies up north. They said – no, more like vowed – that the team would refocus when they got back to Morgantown and prepare for the fight that faced them.

A fight they had every intention to win.

According to WVU assistant coach Larry Harrison, that is exactly what the team has done. After taking two days of to rest and reenergize following the loss to the Panthers, Harrison says the Mountaineers showed up to practice on Monday with the kind of intensity they had not exhibited all season.

He and the staff were pleased with what they saw on that first day back, but what has them thrilled is that in the two practices since Monday, they’ve shown the same passion, the same intensity and the same determination to turn things around and accomplish their preseason goals.

“We always practice hard, but I think it seems like our level of being competitive in practice and paying attention to detail has increased because they know that we had the opportunity win the Pitt game,” Harrison told wvillustrated.com Thursday evening.

“I think our guys realized that if we’re going to win the BIG EAST tournament or the BIG EAST regular season title, we can’t allow games like the Pittsburgh game slip away from us.”

The first half of the first game back after the Pitt debacle was a good indication that the team is learning from their previous flaws that found them falling behind early to nearly any opponent they faced. Despite the early lead the Mountaineers got on Providence, however, Harrison and the rest of the staff expect more from their players.

“We need to get to a point when a 20-point lead becomes a 30-point lead. That’s when you become a good team is when you increase your lead and you don’t relax,” says Harrison. “That same intensity that we’ve been having in practice, we’ve got to continue that all the way throughout the games for the full 40 minutes.”

With just five games remaining, it’s tough to figure how the Mountaineers will make up the two and a half game deficit they’d need in order to win the regular season crown, but the possibility exists. The more attainable goal at this point, however, is to position the team for a run in Madison Square Garden that second week of March.

With the realignment of the tournament last season, teams who place in the top four gained a significant advantage with a first and second round bye. While the bottom 12 teams duke it out in the first two days of the tournament, the conference heavyweights are able to sit back and relax and perhaps get some shopping done next-door at Macy’s before they have to even consider their first opponent.

“Obviously you would love to finish in the top four and get that second round bye,” says Harrison. “I think we’re in a good position to do that and I think there’s a big difference between having to play four days in a row than three days in a row.”

Whether it be three days or four in MSG, a good run in the post season can have a lot to do with who is coming off your bench to give the starters some rest. West Virginia’s bench has been criticized all season for their lack of offensive production, but Harrison believes at this point they’ve done what was asked of them, for the most part.

“Joe Mazzulla and John Flowers’s productivity to our team is not measured by how many points they score. They bring intensity to our team, they bring defensive presence, so that’s how their productivity is measured,” he says.

The offensive production, Harrison says, is counted on from guys like Deniz Kilicli, Dalton Pepper and Casey Mitchell. He says each of the newcomers is a work in progress, but he does not doubt their ability to perform if the team is counting on them.

“We’ll rotate them off and on and hopefully by the time the BIG EAST and NCAA tournaments come around, we’ll be able to play those guys for substantial minutes and be able to rest some of our starters at different times.”

For whatever reason, it took that loss to Pitt to get the Mountaineers focused on the bigger picture and back to playing how they’ll need to if they really intend to make a splash in New York City and beyond. Who knows, maybe on their road to a BIG EAST title, West Virginia will again come face-to-face with the Pitt Panthers. And wouldn’t that be the perfect scenario for a team that has apparently found a focus and intensity that it had misplaced for the majority of the season.

“They really haven’t said anything about any particular team, but obviously the way we lost the Pitt game didn’t leave a good taste in our mouth,” says Harrison.

“Our whole focus is on winning the BIG EAST tournament regardless of who we play.”