The Reds had to battle back from a goal behind to draw at The Den, producing a fine all-round performance in difficult conditions.
Alex Mighten’s first senior goal secured the point and Hughton was full of praise for his side.
Speaking after the game, he said: “It is a hard-earned point against a very direct team. They have two players up front with good movement and when big Smith comes on, it is even more of a handful.
“We had to work hard for that one. Probably the one thing I was delighted with the most was the reaction to conceding what was a poor goal from our point of view. The reaction from that was important and it was important that we got back into the game as quickly as we could and we were able to do that.
“It was a perfect response and for the morale, for lifting the players. The only thing that we didn’t have in the game, when you know it is a battle and you know it is a physical and direct team, you have to be able to cope with that and in these games, the game opens up a bit. You get those opportunities and we didn’t make the most of the periods when it opened or had good possession in midfield.
“You have to defend as a team. When you only have a back four defending, it is even tougher against this kind of opposition. It is from the front, it was good for Lewis [Grabban] to get his first start for a while and even Cafu, playing as a 10 has got to drop back and do a defensive role to put as much pressure on their two centre halves because if you don’t, then that next ball is coming in. I think it was a good defensive team effort.”
It has been a positive few days for The Reds following the midweek win against Sheffield Wednesday, with Hughton hoping to carry on that positivity into the Boxing Day match against Birmingham at The City Ground.
He said: “I hope we can [carry on the positivity] and we are back home on Boxing Day which will be nice. One thing we have said to the team is that we have played against the top six, we have fallen short but not massively. We have points-wise but not performance-wise.
“Now it is the next level, we are playing against teams who are not in the top six and as you have seen today, they are tough games as it was against Sheffield Wednesday.
“This is a different challenge now, and the challenge is to get as many points as we can.”