You are looking live at some of the gimmicks on hand here in Stillwater today for No. 23 WVU v. No. 22 Oklahoma State.

The Cowboys, who have lost two in a row after winning three straight against ranked Texas, Kansas and Baylor, are 5-2 at Gallagher-Iba Arena in Big 12 play and 11-3 here overall. The Mountaineers continue to lead the conference in road/neutral wins (4-3, 6-0) and have managed to split away games in conference play (3-3). But let’s not pretend things are the same now as they were before. WVU’s looked ordinary to mediocre in Big 12 road games not in Texas, muddying up a win at Kansas State and losing by 27 at Texas, 19 at Oklahoma and 20 at Iowa State.

It is hard to win on the road in the Big 12, and I think that’s one of the biggest-but-not-readily-discussed differences from the Big East. These arenas are on campus. Students come to the games, and are generally rewarded for doing so with T-shirts, cardboard signs and drum sets and, in the case of today, all three. These games aren’t played in downtown arenas shared by NBA teams that are far form campus.

And more often than not — I’d count WVU and Iowa State, and possibly Kansas State as the exceptions, except it’s so damn loud there — the fans are right on top of you. I’ll be working today from the baseline under a basket and directly in front of the student section … with a co-ed’s knee in my back.

Ambiance!

All of that said, there is a lot on the line here today, and WVU’s return to road prominence matters mightily. The team enters the day in fourth-pace in the conference standings and could be tied for second by the end of the day. Second-place Iowa State (9-4) is at Texas and third-place Oklahoma (8-5) is at Texas Tech and presently has its hands full. Wins by the Red Raiders, Longhorns and Mountaineers put WVU into a tie for second with Iowa State. The top two teams are off for the first day of the Big 12 tournament and then play the winners of the opening round’s 7-10 and 8-9 games. There’s an big advantage there.

WVU could also end up in fifth place by the end of the day, but find itself in a perilous spot. The Mountaineers could be tied with Baylor, which plays host to Kansas State, and half a game ahead of Oklahoma State. Those two conclude the regular season against one another.

So, yeah, WVU’s eighth conference game against a ranked team and the 10th against a Big 12 team ranked at some point during the season (the difference between the eight and 10, believe it or not, is TCU, which actually was ranked for a week in December and then fell out of the polls despite not losing) is critical. It looks great next to the Kansas win (“Pretty good team” sounds better than “Pretty good Monday.”), it answers some questions about road woes and is stiffens the team’s stance in the standings.

In short, it puts exclamation points where there are question marks.

Lose it today and all those question marks get a Ctrl-B.

And here’s something I assure the Mountaineers know about and want to address today: They’ve beaten everyone in the Big 12 except Oklahoma State.

The live post is still undefeated…