Bojan Radulovic had fired the Seagulls ahead in the first half before the away side responded with three goals to run out winners on the night, and Rusk spoke about the lessons his side can take from the contest against The Hammers.
He said, “I thought we played some good football and probably should have been out of sight in the first half an hour - we have to score the chances we created.
“We made some enforced changes to the side after the break and that probably had an impact on the momentum of our game. They played very well after the break and the truth is that we didn’t, the match got away from us for 25 minutes from that point, so it’s a learning curve.
“I said to the players at the end that it’s easy to play games when it’s going well and you’re winning, when it got tough in the second half we didn’t do enough, but we’ll go away and reflect and review it and go away and get ready for Tuesday against Newport County.”
The senior first-team trio of Leon Balogun, Bernardo and Alireza Jahanbakhsh all turned out for Albion at The People’s Pension Stadium, and Rusk praised the contribution of all three players after their involvement with his side.
“Both [Bernardo and Jahanbakhsh] came off in substitutions - they were fine and had planned minutes this evening,” he continued.
“The first-team staff wanted to utilise the opportunity to give minutes to all three and it’s always great to have the senior boys around the group.
“In the first half there was some really good play from them all and it was positive for everyone on the field, but the result went against us and overall we can have no complaints given the pattern of the second half.”