For a month now, WVU has rolled the ball on the floor and played better than the other team, winning 10 times in 10 games and taking Big East Tournament and East Region championships along the way.

A player has cemented a legacy, a coach has had his Hall of Fame credentials examined, a team has galvanized a state and a country has learned about a team that stays oh, so loose and seems to do no wrong.

True, it’s hard to avoid the “gee whiz” attitude whether you watch the team from up close or a distance. Even when bad, the Mountaineers are good. If you’re inclined to dislike them, you get to know them and feel different. I’m going to wake up in Indy tomorrow and see the headline in the Star: Huggins Saves Runaway Bus. I’ll turn to A-2 to check the obits and go about my day.

Lost in this perpetual pep rally is the reality WVU is still a team that sometimes has bad days, just not very many.

You see, we’ve heard just about all the questions asked a trillion times and answered in kind and if we can’t recite the question after the first few words, we can do so for the answer — though, to be fair, WVU has been pretty good about mixing it up and that’s probably why these press conferences have turned into scenes from the Mountainlair’s Comedy Club.

But Da’Sean Butler was asked Tuesday about The Speech that followed the loss to UConn and people turned their attention elsewhere or turned and walked away rather than listen to the answer again.

Too bad, for what they missed was the true story about when their season changed.

“He was irate,” Mazzulla said. “We’re over there laughing and joking around and we’d kind of forgotten about that practice. He didn’t. We realized how important this was.”

The whole idea of wasted days was now very clear. The past two days of practice were aimed at Louisville – and they weren’t even good practices. To compound the problem, the Mountaineers were supposed to prepare for an unexpected opponent without the benefit of a full practice.

“He went ballistic,” Butler said.