COMMENTARY
MORGANTOWN, W. Va. –You see an overall shooting performance like the one No. 11 West Virginia displayed in its 87-71 victory against No. 19 Richmond on Sunday, and the mind begins to wander.
To where? Well, next week’s national rankings for starters.
That’s where the Mountaineers (6-1) will likely find themselves nestled somewhere in the top 10, ahead of such blue bloods named Duke and North Carolina, as well as preseason Final Four favorite Virginia.
Big 12 play won’t begin until Friday, against Iowa State inside the WVU Coliseum, but how hard will it be for those outside of the program to not begin to eye up that Kansas game on Dec. 22, at famed Allen Fieldhouse?
How many internet clicks will come from this state whenever ESPN’s Joe Lunardi releases his updated Bracketology in a couple of days?
He’s got WVU as a No. 2 seed right now. Go out and beat Kansas, well, just how much artificial excitement in these parts could be built around the discussion of the Mountaineers as a possible one seed in the NCAA tournament?
That, of course, is the mind wandering to a very happy place at a time when everyone in the world probably needs a little escape from reality.
And that’s what the Mountaineers have created through their first seven games — optimism and hope.
The problem? There are still 20 regular-season games remaining.
We remind you that it was just last season when the Mountaineers were nearly in the exact same spot.
A 14-2 start had WVU up to as high as No. 12 in the AP poll and ranked even higher in the NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) that is used for seeding the NCAA tournament.
There was talk then of cruising to a No. 2 seed in the NCAAs and challenging for a Big 12 championship.
Well, you remember the struggles, the ups and the downs that followed.
Can WVU handle its success better than it did last season?
When you break everything down, sure, there are some little things the Mountaineers need to improve upon, but that really is the one major question that surrounds this team.
“This year, I feel like we have an older group,” said WVU senior guard Taz Sherman, who finished with 15 points against the Spiders. “People like Jordan (McCabe), Emmitt (Matthews Jr.) and Derek (Culver), they’re all juniors now. They’ve been playing college basketball for three years. We just look forward to the next game and think about the game we have at the moment.”
Bob Huggins, of course, gets paid to worry about the here and now and not worry about the what ifs.
Those little things are exactly what Huggins is most concerned with.
“We talk about (handling success). We talk about how we’re not close to where we need to be,” he said. “We talk about the fact that we’re going to go play in probably the hardest basketball league in the country. We’re going to fly more miles than anybody in America other than maybe Hawaii.
“We continue to try and fight this COVID-19 thing by taking care of ourselves and not putting ourselves in harm’s way and they’ve been really good. There’s so many variables and still so many things that can happen.”
For the rest of us, is it time to buy in on the Mountaineers’ early success?
Knowing full well that this is going to be about as an unpredictable season as there’s ever been in college basketball, why not?
“The big difference from last year is we have more of a complete team,” Sherman said. “When things don’t go right for one player, coach can just throw in another player and get better production. I feel like we could play all 13 guys if we needed to and that’s what separates us from last year.”
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