Yesterday I was going to throw out a question: Is this WVU basketball team really the sixth-best team in America? Does it feel or look or seem like it? The idea was not to convict or acquit the Mountaineers. It was just to gauge the audience to see if there were skeptics, believers or both. Kind of like asking, “Are they really there? How did this happen?”

It then occurred to me there are two answers to the original question: I don’t know and no.

The Mountaineers are good and in all likelihood will soon prove themselves worthy of their place in this echelon — unless they ruin it for themselves. But what do we know of top six teams here? It’d be hard to compare this team to a precedent that came nearly 28 years ago. The game, the style, the players, the coaches, the everything is different. So who knows? To that, it was early, just five games in against an uninspiring list of opponents. There was no non-conference game against a Kentucky or UNC or Florida on which we could base a broader assumption.

So I tabled the discussion.

For a day.

Last night’s surprisingly easy romp against Duquesne left the question out there with no definitive answer and one isn’t likely to come for a while still. Game against Coppin State and Cleveland State won’t provide an emphatic yes … but could supply the contrary.

Perhaps that explains why the Mountaineers are running out of patience.

“It’s probably been a burden I’ve carried for 27 years,” Huggins said after his side beat the Dukes for the seventh straight season and by the second largest margin since 1990. “I could come in here and smile and lie to you all like some guys do and then I could go in there and tell them what I really think. Some guys do that. I’ve never done that.

“When we’re not good I’ll tell you we’re not good. We’ve got to do a better job. When I say ‘we,’ that’s all of us. We’ve all got to do a better job. If you refuse to do a better job you get to be a cheerleader – and if I wasn’t doing what I’m doing, if I was sitting out there, I’d rather watch our cheerleaders.”

Hey, I get it. Huggins knows when he’s got something special and I suspect he sees a lot of things in this team — defense, depth, rebounding, offensive balance, dynamic players. He’s battling or preventing complacency and really, really pushing for more so no one thinks something good is good enough.

Simple stuff, really.

There are some things that do stand out, though. The Mountaineers could and maybe should have beaten Duquesne by 50 last night. They instead blamed themselves for again letting up and going away from the style that built a big lead.

The defense was remarkable in the first half, but waned in the second, although I realize it’s hard to sustain that energy throughout, especially with such a cushion against a team that played as sloppily as did the Dukes.

Offensively, there’s something weird about these guys. Sometimes they come completely off the track. They’re still good or superior enough in those stretches to put up points make a run, but that won’t last. Huggins won’t allow it. There are certain players and player combinations that, as Huggins said, bring the offense “to a screeching halt.” Time is running out on them. Ditto to the guys trying to get theirs. 

What seems to bother the Mountaineers the most is this: They’re good, they know it and they know what it takes to be good, but they don’t know why they don’t consistently adhere to it.