The NCAA men’s basketball tournament was never designed to be some sort of vacation for the 68 teams fortunate enough to receive an invitation.
Rather it is a reward for a regular season well played, but also a step toward a national championship that’s the most difficult of hurdles.
That’s conventional thinking, but there is nothing conventional about what WVU has experienced this season.
That includes off-court issues, as well as what’s happened in games, including a Big 12 season that would prove to be somewhat challenging even for the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls.
The Mountaineers knocked off Oklahoma 93-61 on Saturday, taking a short step toward inclusion into the NCAA tournament.
There are so many steps remaining that we don’t even want to get into it all, but there is still hope remaining in early February for a team that is just now picking up it’s third conference victory of the season.
That is not a regular season that’s been well played. Instead it’s been one filled with setbacks that WVU head coach Bob Huggins center around a lack of leadership that he laid out on Thursday.
“We don’t have a strong leader,” he said. “We have some guys who talk a lot, but I wouldn’t call them strong leaders.
“We don’t have guys like I used to have here, who when guys were going through the motions in practice, they’d stop practice and say, ‘Get in here.’ They would rip some people. We don’t have that.”
And it’s led to a roller coaster of a season that’s coincided with maybe the toughest the Big 12 has ever been from top to bottom.
This is where the NCAA tournament comes in, because if WVU somehow finds a way to get there — “I’d be surprised if we don’t get in,” Huggins said — the journey would seemingly be 1,000 times more difficult than once reaching the ultimate destination.
Minus some type of miracle finish that sees WVU pull off the mightiest of upsets on the road against the likes of Kansas, Texas or Baylor, the Mountaineers are slated to be a low seed in the NCAAs.
While some lower seeds find their way into the second weekend of the tournament, the odds are stacked against them.
So, what exactly would be the benefit for this WVU team? Other than the experience of saying, “Hey, at least we got there,” what good is done with a short stay?
“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Huggins said. “I honestly don’t think that’s going to happen. I think we’re going to get into the NCAA tournament and I think we’re going to win games in the NCAA tournament. How many? I don’t know, but I think we’ll win games and advance.”
That may be cause for some to roll their eyes or it could be a reality that if WVU somehow wins enough in the Big 12 that it suddenly becomes a little bit less taxing to beat everyone else.
Or, in some weird way, the NCAA tournament would be a breath of fresh air after spending three months playing in the Big 12.
“You could look at it a couple of different ways,” Huggins began. “You could look at it as it’s a new beginning or a second chance. Everybody who goes to college wants to play in the NCAA tournament. I don’t have any doubt that we can get into the NCAA tournament.”
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