Oh hey, West Virginia. You just went 11 rounds in a scheduled 12-round fight on the road against never-loses-at-home-and-also-super-talented-and-oh-by-the-way-eighth-ranked Kansas. Your head coach is concerned about what legs your top two scorers have left for the next game and your third leading scorer was imperceptible and has his teammates begging him to stay upright. The turnaround is 51 hours between Kansas, which has the leading scoring offense in Big 12 play, and No. 16 Iowa State, which has the conference’s best scoring offense over the course of the season.

And, neat, the league’s leading scorer, Melvin Eim, split his wig and scored a league-record 48 points Saturday.

Your thoughts?

“Who’d they play?” Eron Harris asked.

That’d be TCU. And TCU is pretty bad, particularly on the road. And the Cyclones were home at the Hilton Coliseum.

But come on, 48?

“Forty-eight. Wow,” Harris said, and I’m guessing he was not impressed. “Forty-eight. He put up the shots, I guess. That was the game they let him rock. Whatever. I don’t know. Maybe they played no defense. I don’t know.”

To be fair, Harris was still not past the loss to Kansas. And Harris has this wonderful, unrelenting trait that will not allow himself to put someone else over, to give away credit that hasn’t been authenticated by his personal seal of approval. He’s convinced WVU will beat Kansas at home, in part because of some transitive property. Kansas was at home Saturday and won by 14. Kansas beat WVU by 26 at Allen Fieldhouse last season. WVU lost by five at home to Kansas last season. I’m pretty sure he’s thinking the Mountaineers will win by seven March 8.

So as for Ejim, from one scorer to another …

“That’s something that doesn’t matter to me,” Harris said. “They won the game. If they lost the game? I don’t know. That’s what matters to me, whether you win or lose. He got the points. I don’t care about points. If I did, I wouldn’t pass the ball.”

Well, Ejim did his damage on 24 shots. Twenty-four! He made 20! Only two of them were 3-pointers — he was 2-for-2 — and he only got six points at the foul — he was 6-for-6. He added 18 rebounds, a career-high for the guy who led the conference in rebounding last season and somehow gets no pub. Until now, I guess.

“This will get a lot of national attention obviously,” Hoiberg said, “because the fact it’s a Big 12 record and there’s been some pretty special players that have gone through this league.

“(Kevin) Durant and Blake Griffin and all the great players that have gone through this league, Melvin Ejim’s name is at the top for points, and that’s unbelievable for a guy that probably doesn’t get as much credit as he deserves.”

Also, Iowa State needed it because the Horned Frogs would not go away. They actually scored 47 points in the second half. Still, that wasn’t enough to stop Ejim.

Forty-eight! WVU had seven players combine for 18 fewer against the Jayhawks!

“That’s amazing,” Juwan Staten said. “Forty-eight points is amazing, no matter who you’re going against. He’s a great player and he’s playing great. I don’t have too much to say about that, especially since we’re playing them. That’s not really good for us if he’s scoring the ball like that.”

Uh, no. Especially since you are playing him and your team’s defense is the easiest to make baskets against in the Big 12.

And yet, WVU’s biggest problem coming out of the loss was not defense, despite Kansas shooting 54.9 percent to match a WVU opponent season-high (Kansas State in Manhattan). WVU took 48 shots, the fewest of the season, and had bad days from Terry Henderson and Remi Dibo and probably even Harris, who was 3-for-10/3-for-9 and 0-for-6/0-for-5 after making 3s on three straight possessions in the first half.

The Mountaineers have to score with teams to win and had too many spells against Kansas.

The Mountaineers didn’t make a shot in the final 5:45 and had just one in the final 9:32. That came after missing the final seven shots over the last 7:36 of the first half.

Yet despite those early spells shooting just 39.6 percent, WVU (14-10, 6-5 Big 12) was there until late in the same place where it lost by 26 points a season ago thanks in large part to a 26-9 run that ended that one early.

“We were attacking the basket and hitting open shots, but there came a certain point in this game we couldn’t hit shots when we had open opportunities,” Harris said. “That happens. Overall, we’re a better team than what we were. We’re 10 times better than we were in the game last year.

“This is arguably the best team in the league. We’re progressing. We’re getting better. I say that even though we lost, but we did some great things in this game and we’re going to learn from this game. But we’ve got to put the game in the past quick, like we have all season, and get ready for Iowa State and make sure we beat Iowa State at home.”