Much on the line as No. 23 Kansas visits Morgantown to play No. 17 West Virginia

MORGANTOWN, W. Va. — For 20 minutes, Sean McNeil had the type of game against Kansas where if he had bounced the ball off his head, it likely would have gone through the basket.

In the first half, McNeil was a perfect 6 of 6 from 3-point range and scored 20 points in what ended up a 79-65 Kansas victory on Dec. 22 at Allen Fieldhouse.

So, of course, McNeil and his shooting that night was a trending topic as the No. 17 Mountaineers (12-5, 5-3 Big 12) get set for Saturday’s rematch against the No. 23 Jayhawks at the WVU Coliseum.

“Just the way I shot it and my confidence,” McNeil said when asked about his takeaway from that game. “The approach I had going in, not only that game, but the games more recently, too. I wasn’t thinking. Yeah, I scored 24 in that game. It’s obviously nice, but it’s in the past. I have to play in the present.”

There is a flip side to that. While McNeil had a career game shooting the ball, so did the Jayhawks (12-6, 6-4), who finished an impressive 16 of 37 from behind the arc.

It tied for the most 3-pointers an opponent has made in one game against the Mountaineers in school history.

WVU head coach Bob Huggins, who has taken nine different teams to Allen Fieldhouse, only to lose all nine times, now has a theory on those 16 threes in December.

“You know what it seems like? It kind of seems like that old story about the fat guy going to the pool and taking his shirt off and all the mosquitoes yell, ‘Buffet! Buffet!’ and attack him, ” Huggins said. “That’s kind of how I feel when we walk in (to Allen Fieldhouse) and its says West Virginia across our chests, everybody in the eastern part of Kansas yells, ‘Buffet! Buffet!’ and kind of comes after us. That’s the way it seems. We’ve never finished what we started there.”

There are many instances to tie into those Allen Fieldhouse games, whether it was the 16 3-pointers or the night Kansas erased a 64-50 deficit over the final three minutes of regulation in 2017 to win in overtime.

At the WVU Coliseum, the Kansas-WVU match-ups have had some different endings.

The Jayhawks are 3-5 all-time in Morgantown with WVU having some memorable moments, including Juwan Staten’s last-second coast-to-coast drive in 2015 and Jermaine Haley’s game-winning drive to the basket in 2019.

As McNeil said, it’s now about playing in the present, and currently, both schools are in a four-way tie for second place in the Big 12, along with Texas and Oklahoma.

Kansas has shot just 30.2% from 3-point range since playing West Virginia and has gone 4-5 over its last nine games.

So, are those 16 3-pointers just simply a number from the past?

“A lot of those threes came in the second half when we gave up a lot of offensive rebounds,” McNeil said. “There were a lot of long rebounds they ended up getting and getting (the ball) out to their shooters. They’re watching film, and they’re probably thinking we don’t box out well. What we’re working on is boxing out and getting to loose balls to kind of eliminate those second-chance points.”

TWEET @bigjax3211