I figured there was an expensive and complex computer involved — and there is — but constructing the Big East’s basketball schedule is a task that begins on the ground level. Someone has to tell the computer what to do, right?

Turns out that shortly after the end of the season the conference asks itself as well as the coaches to predict the upcoming season — and figure that’s pretty difficult and inexact given roster turnover with the draft and transfers/deparutres as well as incoming players … and politics. 

It’s still sensible and tangible and therefore useful as a starting point for scheduling puposes. The results are gathered and then sorted for the computer’s consumption.

This year, I’m told, there was a wider range of opinions among the coaches about where teams might finish. In all of the years the Big East has scheduled (with 16 or 18 games, where not everyone plays every other team the same number of times), there never has been a wider range of opinions in the coaches’ vote.

That comes after a testy season in which 27 percent of Big East Conference games were decided by three or fewer points in regulation, or in overtime.

The average “range” in the coaches’ poll this year was nearly an 8. To explain that, it means a team that was picked fourth by one coach was placed 11th by another – and that 8 is an average. There were multiple teams in the middle of the Big East scheduling “tiers” that stretched over 11 spots. That means the same team may have gotten a third and a 13th-place vote.

(That tells you one of two things: Even the coaches aren’t sure about whether some clubs, say, belong fourth or 10th, or they’re trying to fiddle with the system to get matchups they want. It’s not likely, however, with 16 coaches voting, that even four or five can change the outcome.)

Teams are placed into those tiers, and the assumption by many is that it’s four tiers of four teams. Not so. It’s not about how many teams are in a tier, but where the gaps are among the tiers.

This year there were five tiers, and the tiers aren’t broken down evenly, but are divided where there are significant splits in the poll vote totals (15 points for a first-place vote, 1 for a 15th-place; a coach doesn’t include his own team).

WVU was a “second tier” team, which is probably a fair approximation and certainly matters not to the Mountaineers. That projection ended up giving them a home-and-home against low tier, middle tier and upper tier teams DePaul, Louisville and Pitt, respectively.

So, once  more, it’s a compeitive conference schedule. And what of the non-conference schedule? Not as hard, but not a lot of gimmes, either.

Purdue, projected as a top five club with Rob Hummel, E’Twaun Moore and JaJuan Johnson returning, will visit WVU Coliseum in January, in what is likely to be a CBS national telecast game. The Mountaineers also plan to start a home-and-home series at Miami (Fla.).

Huggins, who never has been isn’t afraid to schedule his teams into toughies, has the Mountaineers in the Puerto Rico Tip-Off in late November with North Carolina, Vanderbilt, Minnesota, Western Kentucky, Nebraska, Davidson and Hofstra … No brackets there yet.

WVU has Charleston Civic Center dates with Marshall and VMI, goes to Duquesne, and has also Coliseum visits from Cleveland State, Oakland (Mich.), American U., and Robert Morris.