This goes against just about everything I tend to believe in — I won’t even draft a depth chart for football and we’re in spring practice — but let’s take a look ahead to the 2010-11 basketball season.

You know the Mountaineers are going to play a tremendously competitive non-conference schedule. The Big East will lose a lot of stars to graduation and the draft, but still be formidable. How WVU negotiates the way to the postseason and 20 or so wins is actually pretty interesting.

Consider two opposing views, neither of which is wrong, but when put side by side illustrate the unknown and develop a neat little discussion.

One suggests WVU might look a little like Duke and lean on three players from the perimeter pool — Truck, Mazzulla, Pepper, Mitchell, Cottrill, West — and two frontcourt forces — Jones, Kilicli, Jennings, Flowers, Thoroughman, Nyarsuk.

There would be a difference, of course, in that WVU would rely more on Jones and Kilicli for scoring than Duke did from its forwards.

The idea, though, is the offense has to get better. Losing Butler, WELLS and now Ebanks hurts the offense, but really hurts the defense. It’s a lot to expect WVU to win 62-59 games next season.

WVU will be a different team next season with a new way of playing offense. The Mountaineers hope the biggest difference is that they’re actually good at it.

Too often this year, WVU struggled to score baskets. While the team managed to win despite that deficiency, it can’t continue if the program wants to make deep tournament runs the norm.

The Mountaineers ran into a team of comparable defensive ability Saturday night, but Duke was clearly superior on offense.

On the other end is an idea WVU won’t look like Duke, but rather more like Cincinnati. The aforementioned big bodies will be able to defend, though perhaps not as well in the 1-3-1, and replace the rebounding lost by the three departures. Improved play by the guards and less reliance on Butler can help fill in the scoring void.

But, to be honest, this becomes more a typical Huggins team, the kind of team he had at Cincinnati.

It is big and powerful and defensive minded, with the likes of Cam Thoroughman and Jonnie West and newcomer Noah Cottrill to come off the bench to provide every aspect of the game.

The cupboard certainly is not bare; it simply has been redecorated.

The options Huggins has are many, but the staple will probably be a big man in the middle, be it Kilicli, Jennings or Nyarsuk. That’s 15 fouls he has at center as he tries to dominate the boards with size.

Jones, of course, becomes the go-to guy, a player who can score inside or out, ready to fill the role that Butler and Joe Alexander before him filled. Less athletic than those two, Jones gets his points in a different manner, but you would look for him to average close to 20 points a game next season.

Look for more scoring out of the shooting guard position, too.