… but West Virginia is, in fact, in deed, indeed a bubble team. And if you’re keeping score at home, if you’re, uh, waiting for the ffffffffffamiliar feeling, you then have a bad feeling about how this ends.

I sat here and crunched some numbers Wednesday night (I say that because this thing changed a good bit today and will change a good bit more in the coming days). The big development was WVU’s RPI dropping to No. 51. The SOS is No. 9.

Seton Hall’s loss helped. It may have cleared space on the bubble. USF’s win did not help, at least not necessarily, even though WVU won at USF. That kind of seems like WVU’s  best win. So, WVU beat a good team and that win doesn’t improve because USF beat a bad Villanova team. Really, WVU beat a good team that proved it was a good team.

I suppose we can argue this “best win” element …

WVU did beat Georgetown, which is No. 10 in the RPI. But WVU has for years been a good matchup against Georgetown. And it was a home game and Georgetown, for some reason, is a very different team away from home (six of the season’s seven losses are on the road).

Kansas State is No. 40 in the RPI (three spots above USF) and that was a “neutral site” game by label only … and K-State is “in” the large dance. But that was in December and the USF win is fresher, within the last eight or the last 10 games the selection committee still values, or once valued, so it still seems like a bigger deal.

But also, and this is perhaps a terrible thing to say, it’s USF, which is still not yet locked into the tournament itself. No offense to the Bulls, who I do really, really like. I just don’t think this bodes well for WVU.

Now, today, Thursday, I think WVU has done enough. But I’m not positive. I feel way, way less certain about WVU being in than I did about Kevin Jones winning Big East Player of the Year.

In short, I can see WVU in the NIT. I know a lot — a lot — can happen today, tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday. Keep an eye on the mid-majors and one-bid leagues getting that second bid. Keep an eye on the conversations about the Drexels of the country. Keep an eye, specifically, on North Carolina State, Alabama, Colorado State, Miami and Northwestern. Those are going to provide significant developments.

Oh, bookmark and have some fun with this.
For now? For the time before Selection Sunday? Well, the Mountaineers feel pretty badly about how they played the ninth-hardest schedule in the country and that they are suddenly unsure what will happen next.

And how did this happen?

The loss to UConn before 20,057 Madison Square Garden fans was WVU’s fifth after building a double-digit lead, fifth while leading with five minutes to play and eighth by seven or fewer points.

“We can’t put a game away in the last couple of minutes,” WVU forward Deniz Kilicli said. “We don’t know what the problem is. Nobody knows it and nobody can solve it because nobody wants to accept what’s going on.”

What the Mountaineers must accept now is a four-day wait to learn their postseason fate from the NCAA selection committee.

“We’ve done everything they’ve asked us to do other than maybe win a couple more games,” WVU Coach Bob Huggins said. “You all know there were some.”