The at-large chances are slimmer now than ever since WVU positioned itself on the NCAA Tournament bubble, but the Mountaineers are still a streaky team capable of getting hot pitching or robust batting, or even a proper combination of both, to make some noise.

A Big 12 Tournament championship gets them in automatically. A deep run, likely to the final, might be good enough to earn an invitation.

But right now, WVU is again on the outside, same as it ever was since 1996.

Honestly? This is sort of fascinating.

On one hand, WVU has done what it needs to do to get in, what with the 20th-hardest schedule in the country and a RPI of 29 — and those numbers have been somewhat static for a while now. That’s yeomen’s work in a long season.

But on the other hand — and that one is larger than the other — WVU is five-games under .500 in the Big 12, which dilutes some of the arguments that can be made for playing in the NCAA’s second-best league, and has the 124th-best winning percentage in the country.

And then there’s this: WVU is missing four games (and maybe six).

The Mountaineers had one game rained out against Baylor (No. 87 RPI) and one game rained out against Marshall. WVU was 2-0 against Baylor and beat Marshall 10-3 at Hawley Field. It’s conceivable WVU would have won both of those rained out games.

Uh, Mike, that’s only two games. You said four (and maybe six).

I did. WVU was also guilty of a secondary violation last season for scheduling one more game than NCAA rules allow. There were 56 scheduled games, which is the max, in the February-May season. But in October, WVU played an exhibition game against Potomac State. The compliance office “had no knowledge of the competition” when it reviewed and approved the 56-game schedule. If it knew, it said it would have canceled one of the 56 games because the Potomac State game counted toward the max.

The punishment is a 2-for-1 principle, which means WVU could only schedule 54 games this season. In the end, Randy Mazey scheduled 52.

Why? It’s not clear. It not unprecedented, either.

Maybe he left some room for an impromptu matchup or two, say, when the team was on the road and a school in the region needed a game out of the blue.

Or maybe he scheduled up like he did to manipulate strength of schedule and make up for losing the two games to the penalty and he just didn’t want to soften that by adding two tomato cans.

Or maybe he left the two games out there so he wouldn’t jeopardize his team’s chances by making things too hard.

Either way, there are two unscheduled games out there on top of the two lost to the violation and the two lost to rain. And WVU took a big bite out of non-conference play and has a healthy strength of schedule as a result.

So let’s leave the unscheduled games out of the conversation. Perhaps the bite was so big that he would have scheduled a pair of home games, i.e. wins, where the two were lost to the penalty. Mid-week things to keep the team sharp and allow pitchers and batters to develop before, or even early in, Big 12 play.

You wonder what might be if WVU was 29-23 (or even 31-23) heading into conference tournament.

The team doesn’t really care, though, and maybe most fascinating of all is how the Mountaineers feel like they’re due.

“You never know what you need to get in,” Mazey said. “It all depends what else happens around the country. But in boxing and MMA and anything like that, you always say you don’t want to leave it in the hands of the judges. You go for the knockout. Crazy things have happened in the past.”

Crazy things have happened to WVU this season, which is why players and coaches feel oddly composed despite the losing streak and why they’re sort of convinced this will turn soon.

The Mountaineers started 2-4 before winning six in a row and were 12-8 before they played a home game. They went 4-4 before winning four straight. They lost seven in a row before going 9-1 with seven straight wins at the end.

WVU has been outscored only 34-20 in this losing streak, that after outscoring teams 60-20 in a seven-game winning streak. The Red Raiders won in 11 innings Thursday and in their last at-bat a day later before winning 4-0 Saturday. WVU left the bases loaded twice in that game and left 33 runners on base and 20 in scoring position in the series.

“It looks to me,” Mazey said, “like it’s time to win a lot.”