Just finished writing a column for Wednesday that dives into an annual premise I like to explore. Basically, there comes a point in a season when it’s pretty clear and mostly agreed upon that a team is what it is. Call it the “You Are Who You Are Axiom.”

Typically throughout the course of a season, a team trends in specific directions and games are defined and decided by familiar themes. Old habits are hard to break. New ones are difficult to acquire. Your season is quite likely going be extended and perhaps ended by those things.

Monday night WVU lost to Syracuse in the Carrier Dome and it seemed like a good idea and a good time to draw these lines. Not because the Mountaineers are in need of help, but because there are ideas about indelible identity now.

The Mountaineers are now 2-4 against ranked teams with four more games remaining against ranked opponents.

The style with which WVU played was, at the very least, familar across many levels, but also surprising and, as far as the Mountaineers are concerned, disappointing. 

“We’ve got to realize teams are going to come out harder in the second half,” guard Casey Mitchell said. “We tried to do the same things in the second half that we did in the first half because we had a four-point lead, but we didn’t realize they were going to come out hard and hit more shots because they wanted to win the game in the second half.”

The games look familiar. The explanations sound familiar. There are some of those common themes mentioned above.

There have been stretches in games and over several games where WVU has looked great and not so great. There are reasons for both, reasons that generate optimism as well as pessimism. There are pitfalls to avoid and predictions that can me made for these Mountaineers.

So today’s question, as I travel back home, is a this: Who are these guys?