It’s West Virginia, it’s West Virginia, the pride of … a league that makes no sense. This is not a perfect team or the Big 12’s best team, but this is the embodiment of a league that’s hard to decipher and oftentimes goes against the grain.

Understand the Mountaineers are in a bad spot right now. Their senior guards have been down and out. It’s a touchy subject outside a locker room that wants Juwan Staten and Gary Browne back, but believes things will be fine without them. Two losses harm seeding for the Big 12 and NCAA tournaments. You want to be peaking at the end.

That said, WVU’s in a good place. The arrow is pointing up. I’m not sure they aren’t peaking. Watching the Mountaineers play the past two games, witnessing the startling improvement from Saturday to Tuesday, sensing the players are mad as hell they frittered away a chance to do something they really believed they were going to do, you do get the feeling the Mountaineers are just fine.

“Our guys just busted their (posteriors) and really should have won a game nobody gave them a chance to win,” coach Bob Huggins said. “Why are we worried about those two guys? I’m not worried about those two guys. If they play, they play. If they don’t play, they don’t play. I think we probably showed we’re OK.”

Now it would be easy to say that, too, is rubbish, to remind Huggins Staten missed both games in this losing streak and Browne barely played Saturday before watching Tuesday. Browne’s ankle sprain is serious. Staten’s groin injury is troublesome, and swelling in his left knee sounds more like a symptom than a condition. This isn’t what a team wants to carry into the postseason.

It would be harder to say this is something WVU needed, but that wouldn’t be wrong. Huggins has an impressionable team, something it proved by beating Kansas, Oklahoma State and Texas in succession after losing three of four and five of 10. But those wins — a thriller against the mighty Jayhawks, a thumping of the Cowboys and a payback against the Longhorns — threatened to convince those young minds they had it all figured out.

The Mountaineers like a challenge. They might have needed one. They certainly got one.

“I knew we’d be all right,” Miles said. “We learn from those guys, but we learn from each other. We’ve got some ball players, man. We’ve just got to be smarter and learn to play the game better and not make stupid mistakes when it matters most.”