Coincidence? Noted Canadian Brady Heslip is the cover boy for tonight’s program and he gets his looks against WVU’s forgiving defense?

Better question: Concerned?

The Mountaineers, tied with TCU and Texas Tech for the Big 12’s worst 3-point defense, have had two mixed, though critically similar performances against two of the Big 12’s best shooters the past two games. Dusty Hannahs, of course, went all sorts of silly with a 7-for-7 night inside the Coliseum. Phil Forte was uncharacteristically erratic Saturday, missing 8 of 9 shots in Oklahoma State’s victory.

“Different results, Mike. How are them similar?” you say.

That’s 16 3-point attempts to guys you can’t be allowing 16 3-point attempts to — and here comes Heslip, who has a very limited conscience.

“To be honest, if it’s me and I catch the ball and I’m open, I’m shooting it 99 percent of the time,” Heslip said. “At the same time, I’d like to think that I have a high basketball IQ. I know the time and the score. If there’s less than a minute to go and I’m open, I’m going to dribble it out to ensure we win and we don’t give the other team a chance. But other than that, 99.9 percent of the time, I’m letting the thing go. I think every time I shoot it that it’s going in. That’s my thought process.”

That’s his job, of course. The Bears are a tall, long team and they can crush people on the offensive boards (14.5 per game). Kenny Chery is very good at getting in the lane. Isaiah Austin, Rico Gathers and Cory Jefferson demand a lot of attention and sometimes two bodies.

It all adds up to leave Heslip open a lot. Texas Tech passed and pressed the rim a lot. Hannahs would be left open. Oklahoma State had to ad lib without Kamari Murphy and Marcus Smart and the guys they would have run off of Murphy to contest Forte outside were somewhat forced to pay attention to Le’Bryan Nash inside. That’s how it works.

And we hear tonight that Heslip is probably going to start in place of Gary Franklin, which means he’ll definitely have a chance to get going early and he could play more minutes and get more opportunities to do what he does.