TOP 10 SHOWDOWN: Baylor-West Virginia also a chance for Jared Butler, Derek Culver to meet on the court

MORGANTOWN — It is buried beneath a sea of obvious reasons, but there is more than meets the eye to No. 6 West Virginia’s matchup today against No. 3 Baylor at the WVU Coliseum.

The national rankings, NCAA Tournament seeds and a Big 12 championship possibly hanging in the balance, those are the obvious, yet still interesting factors behind the game.

“I understand that if we sweep our last four games at home, which will be a big test going into tournament time, we should be comfortably on that one line, in my opinion,” WVU guard Jordan McCabe said. “That would mean we beat Baylor, beat a very good TCU and Oklahoma State team, which is looking down the road and I don’t like to do that. Hypothetically, you would assume we would be in that conversation for being a No. 1 seed. That’s our goal and we don’t have to shy away from that.”

All of that may be possible with a victory by the Mountaineers (17-6, 10-4 Big 12), who will play their 10th game of the season against an AP Top 25 team and their fifth against a top-10 opponent.

WVU STATS
NCAA NET RANKINGS
BAYLOR STATS

Behind all of that, in the view of WVU head coach Bob Huggins, is another race.

Rankings and seeding aside, Tuesday’s 5 p.m. game is the first and only time during the regular season that Baylor guard Jared Butler and WVU forward Derek Culver will play on the same court.

While Butler has played the favorite all season for the Big 12 Player of the Year honors, Huggins believes Culver’s play has him in the running, too.

“First of all, I’m not ready to give (Butler) the player of the year,” Huggins said. “I think the guy (Culver) that we have that’s averaging a double-double and has dominated the league has got a pretty good shot at it.”

The Big 12 coaches will cast their ballots at the end of the regular season and coaches are not permitted to vote for their own players.

Both Butler and Culver have raised a good argument.

Culver’s 11 double-doubles leads the league and the junior leads the Big 12 in rebounding at 10.1 boards per game.
Butler, meanwhile, has been the star of a team that was undefeated until the Bears (18-1, 10-1) finally lost to Kansas last Saturday.

He’s fifth in the conference in scoring (16.4 ppg), third in assists (4.9 apg) and is the only player in the Big 12 making better than 40% of his 3-pointers.

“He’s better and more mature,” Huggins said of Butler. “It’s kind of amazing that you can put four guys on the floor who are that unselfish and they kind of look out for each other. He’s kind of the captain for that.

“When your best player has those attributes, it tends to trickle down to the rest of your team.”

The game marks the 26th time WVU has played an opponent with both teams being ranked in the top 10 and it’s the 10th time it’s happened to the Mountaineers as a member of the Big 12.

WVU is 8-17 in those games, but is 4-1 at home against Baylor since the 2015-16 season.

That includes last season’s 76-64 victory, which ended up as the final game WVU played last season.

“They’re terrific offensively and they play really hard,” Huggins said of Baylor. “They’re veteran. They don’t get rattled. They play at a great pace and they’re terrific at playing in space.”

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