MORGANTOWN, W. Va. — After two games of holding both Northern Iowa and Wichita State to 35% shooting from the field and even worse from 3-point range, Bob Huggins feels his West Virginia men’s basketball is closing in on solidifying itself as top 25 team.
“I told them, ‘Listen, this is a start. We’re not done here,’ ” Huggins said after WVU knocked off Wichita State, 75-63, to win the Cancun Challenge. “We have Rhode Island on Sunday, and they embarrassed us last year.
“Then we go to New York. If we play really well against St. John’s, they’re going to be ranked. That’s what they want. They want to be a national team. I think that’s what everybody wants. If we go in there and play as well as we did here, we can get there. Then we just have to take care of business from there.”
The Mountaineers (6-0), who have not been nationally ranked since the opening week of the 2018-19 season, have already made believers out of the Ratings Percentage Index (RPI), which has WVU as the No. 1 team in the country.
The RPI, a power poll that ranks teams based on record and strength of schedule, has the Mountaineers ahead of No. 2 Kansas by .0144 points and says WVU has played the 12th most difficult schedule in the country at this point.
Jeff Sagarin has WVU ranked No. 12 in his computer-based poll, which leans on margin of victory and where the games are played.
Ken Pomeroy’s computer rankings has the Mountaineers at No. 32.
The Ken-Pom system is based mostly on offensive and defensive efficiency ratings per each possession during a game.
All three rankings play a part into the NET, which is the NCAA’s evaluation tool used to help determine at-large teams for the NCAA tournament.
The NET rankings won’t be released until later this season.
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