Only Providence, South Florida, DePaul and WVU are 0-2 in the Big East … and one of those last two will be 0-3 tomorrow night. Obviously, that’s not the company the Mountaineers want to keep. Not because those other three have been poor-performing teams the past few seasons — though they have, while WVU has not — but because it’s hard to get out of a hole in the Big East.

Say the Mountaineers lose to the Blue Demons. An 0-4 start would seem quite possible with an 11 a.m. tip Saturday at Georgetown.

WVU was better Saturday than it was Dec. 29 in the home loss to St. John’s, but not good enough and especially not at the end of the game, where the road forked and the Mountaineers headed south. There are reasons why they are who they are and why they’ve found themselves down at least 10 points in three of the past four games after avoiding that situation the first eight games.

They can’t get consistent play from Deniz Kilicli or Casey Mitchell — it’d be good to get consistent play from Kilicli and Mitchell — and there’s still a little problem with guarding the ball. The Mountaineers had to go to a 2-3 zone Saturday and leaned on it for the longest stretch of the season, but gave up a lot of offensive rebounds on a day they finished minus-10 in rebounding. Again.

And then there’s the schedule.

Cincinnati (14-0, 2-0), Marquette (10-4, 1-0), Notre Dame (12-2, 1-1), Providence (11-4), Syracuse (15-0, 2-0) and Villanova (12-1, 1-0) play three straight conference road games, but none are being asked to do it as early as WVU is this season.

Not surprisingly, the Mountaineers have the nation’s most difficult schedule and are No. 11 in the RPI. That rating, though, is just sixth best in the conference.

Big East teams are 11-2 at home this season with the losses belonging to 0-2 teams (WVU and Providence).

“We’re not down on ourselves,” senior shooting guard Casey Mitchell said. “This was a tough loss and it was an away game, but we had great energy (Saturday) and we didn’t have that last time.

“We can’t afford to lose at home anymore and we need to win a couple road games. It’d be good to get all our road games, but we definitely need to win some on the road and win the rest of our home games.”