… ask, look, listen and read around and tell me WVU is rattled by Truck Bryant’s injury. You can’t. It wouldn’t be true.

Not to say the Mountaineers are imperturbable. They feel immeasurably bad for Truck. No one wants to see a team at this stage have this situation. And to think it won’t affect the Mountaineers is as silly as the Mountaineers when dealing with the doubts.

Butler was later asked, “Does anything faze you guys?” Butler and the five teammates who joined him exchanged puzzled looks and began to laugh.

“I don’t know what to say,” Butler said.

Junior Joe Mazzulla, who was the starting point guard last year before the growth plate fracture in his left shoulder sidelined him for the season, was asked first if he’d started games before and then how he’d handle this ordeal. Mazzulla didn’t seem to like that very much.

“It’s very difficult,” he said. “I’ve never been in a Sweet Sixteen game before. I don’t really know what to expect.”

Mazzulla, of course, was the backup to Darris Nichols when the Mountaineers lost to Xavier in the 2008 Sweet Sixteen and, according to his teammates, is as basketball smart as anyone else in the locker room. He assumed his sarcasm was obvious, or, at the very least, someone knew something about his background.

“I was waiting for the guy to laugh,” Mazzulla said. “He never did.”

Well, many others did. Those would be the people who caught the designed deception. That’s the way the Mountaineers roll. Defiantly triumphant. Or is it triumphantly defiant? Irregardless this is a team that isn’t lacking for confidence, no matter what happened in practice Tuesday.

“It’s nothing too much to worry about,” senior forward Da’Sean Butler said. “I think we’ll be all right.”