Logically, we return with a basketball post! I don’t want to neglect Bob Huggins — bravo to him on No. 700 and Mike Carey on No. 500 today — and the round ball before I spend a week here in South Florida obsessing about the oblong one.

Big East Conference play begins tonight at home against a 7-5 Villanova team that may not look much like the Wildcats of the recent past, but does try to play like the Wildcats of the recent past.

Villanova is bigger than we’re used to and rebounds it pretty well, but no longer leans on four guards at once. Jay Wright does the 4 Out offense still, but it’s also 3 out more often than not. The guards can still go. They still penetrate. They still stop in transition and shoot 3s. They still kick it out for 3s. They still play a lot of pick-and-roll — and the big guy Mouphtaou Yarou is more reliable with the extended jumper than he once was. They, as a team, are just not quite as skilled as they have been in the past. Not yet, at least.

It’s an interesting matchup because WVU, at home, is favored, even with Deniz Kilicli seemingly unlikely to play and Jay Forsythe still slowed by his balky back. Yet Villanova poses its strengths against WVU’s strengths, WVU doesn’t always defend ball screens as well as Huggins would like and this is still not yet a team that will flat out out-score a team to win.

Still, WVU v. Villanova is always fun. Always. Plus, the Mountaineers have Kevin Jones, who is who we thought he was … only better.

“Honestly, I’ve just been playing like me and that’s rebounding and hitting open shots and finding teammates, which I wasn’t doing last year, when I was more reliant on doing something else and being somebody else,” he said. “That wasn’t working.”

Interesting. Really, you watch him play and he’s not doing anything new, except maybe posting up a little more, but I think he’s only more effective at that particular part of his game than what we saw before. He’s just focused on what he can do and he does it very well and very efficiently.

How often does a kid come back to school and try to add to his game or mess with what worked, yet wasn’t quite good enough for the NBA? Often. But not in this case. (Two very good Huggins quotes in that story, by the way).

As for business down here …