You are looking live inside the Sprint Center, and what really hangs above today’s quarterfinal game between No. 4 seed and 16th ranked Baylor and No. 5 seed and 18th ranked West Virginia is the grip the Bears have had on the Mountaineers all season. WVU beat every team it played this season except LSU, Iowa State and Baylor. WVU lost by a point to the likely NCAA-bound Tigers, by two and by 20 to Iowa State (a 14-point lead was squandered in the first game and the second one was close for a minute) and then by 30 combined points to the Bears. It’s the only team the Mountaineers didn’t have a clue what to do with this season, trailing by 26 points at one point in the Coliseum and 20 in the Ferrell Center.

You can’t qualify the first game, really, but WVU was in a low spot. The spanking from Texas stung and the Mountaineers really were fortunate to beat TCU in overtime. The win at Kansas State was, at the time, promising because WVU played a pretty good second half offensively, but we know more now about the Wildcats than we did then. The Mountaineers never trailed against Texas Tech, but that was tight for a while and Robert Turner made the first half more interesting than it needed to be in a game WVU won by 19 points.

Then came a Devin Williams-less loss by 19 points at Oklahoma, which had lost at WVU by 21 three weeks earlier, and the debacle against Baylor, when the Bears looked like one of the scariest teams in the country.

You probably can qualify the second game, though. WVU went without Juwan Staten and promptly lost Gary Browne and, not to rush to the defense of the Big 12’s coach of the year, it’s hard to adjust on the fly when the irreplaceable point guard is gone and his replacement bows out early on in a road game.

True, Jevon Carter happened, and he made seven 3-pointers, and WVU was within nine points in the second half, but the team never got the push it needed to come all the way back. That said, the second 20 minutes were better than the first, and the second game was probably better than the first.

This is not a place to discuss whether or not it’s hard to beat a team three times in a year. It’s not. If you’re better twice — say, 15 points per game better — why can’t you be better three times?

No, this is a place to explore whether WVU can live the charmed life the third time these two teams get together.

The answer is: Yes. Now, will the Mountaineers live it? I don’t know. I do know this isn’t some sort of foregone conclusion today and that WVU can make some shots and get some stops and maybe find a break along the way to make it happen.

And the Mountaineers will probably have a little extra help today … and possibly a lot of extra help.

That’s Gary Browne in the background and Juwan Staten in the foreground in today’s warmups. Browne is ready to go, and he says he’s about 75 percent, though he told us before yesterday’s practice he hadn’t pressed the three times he practiced since returning from his ankle injury — and that might have changed yesterday. Staten didn’t do anything in the shoot around yesterday, but put up some shots, whatever that means, at practice. No one’s saying he practiced or if he posed for Twitter, but the word is today he won’t play unless the situation grows dire.

That said, neither seems to be shelved much longer.

And back to the point: It’s March, and a 4/5 game against against two teams separated by two spots in the rankings is not a Cinderella scenario. Someone’s got to put a leash on Rico Gathers. The rebounding cannot be one-sided. You can’t set Baylor loose in transition with badly missed shots or live-ball turnovers.

And the 2-3 zone cannot be a problem. WVU spent a lot of time on pump fakes and step-in jumpers in the shoot around and then put its post players through the wringers.

And if you’re job has you running the gauntlet, I’ve got you covered.