You are looking live at the Mountaineer Manics TCU edition of the Musings. You’re probably here today because this thing is somehow sold out. If so, or if not, feel free to play along for 40 minutes.

This is also West Virginia’s first rematch in Big 12 play — that it happens against one of the weaker teams in the first half of the conference schedule is something … and that’s something we’ll get to at a later date — but expect TCU will be better today than it was 21 days ago. The Horned Frogs actually handled the Mountaineers press fairly well in the first half before WVU adjusted and did a few things differently and ultimately prevailed.

(Aside: Shield your eyes at times today. TCU can really guard, and WVU presses, but neither team can shoot it and both teams play a brand of defense that puts scoring at a premium. The over/under is 132.5, and if that hits the over, it’s because of WVU turning over the Horned Frogs a lot, you’d have to think. There’s a see saw to monitor between the week off being good for restoring shooting and inviting rust.)

But Trent Johnson is no dummy — coach of the year in three separate conferences — and he has guys this season who enable him to do more things he believes he can and wants to do. There will be some changes on both sides, subtle and not so, because teams scout and self-scout, and the deeper one team gets into a season the more awareness it has of itself and the opposition thanks to a more broad body of work.

In short, this is when things start to get really interesting and when a team is really tested.

This is also the time of the season the past few years when we’ve asked Bob Huggins and the coach has talked to his players about what the Mountaineers have to do to get into the NCAA tournament. Really, ever since the Final Four team, the story line late in the season — or in the case of two seasons ago, before it fell apart — was how many wins the team needed, where those wins had to come on the schedule and where losses absolutely could not occur.

This is not that. Barring something completely unforeseen, the Mountaineers will be back in the NCAA tournament this season — and they know that.

“It’s on the board,” Huggins said. “They walk in every day it’s on the board. The RPI, everyone’s RPI that we’ve played, what the RPI is for everyone we’re going to play. So they know. They know what’s at stake. They know what’s coming. They understand we go to Texas and lose, we go from 13 to 22.

“That’s not saying RPI is everything. I think it’s the most tangible thing we can do to make them understand.”

Huggins, who puts his hands on strength of schedule, too, said the board has been on display since the first game of the season, and the numbers started floating and the players started following them immediately upon surviving Monmouth (remember that?).

But there’s something new to this group about sort of knowing it’s in, and I think that’ll be interesting to follow. Remember, WVU made a push last season and knew it was driving toward the tournament and it used that as motivation. Then it went south and I think the letdown knowing the tournament was slipping away was too tall for them to reach out and grab and control again.

These guys aren’t talking about how many wins they need to get in and who they have to beat.

“There have been a lot of years we’ve talked about seeding,” Huggins said. “We talked about seeding in 2010. I thought really after we won the Big East tournament we’d be a 1-seed. I thing we ended up being the last 2.”

True, which seems absurd now as it did then, but WVU is having conversations and taking aim higher than merely making the tournament.

“The older guys understand,” Huggins said. “If after three games or whatever you look and see where the RPI is, and you hear them saying, ‘We need to do this to get the RPI down,’ it helps.”

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