There’s a new face and another Final Four coach in the Big 12, and Shaka Smart also happens to be an advocate of full-court pressure defense. While digging up how Big 12 teams coped with and beat West Virginia’s press last season — and what missteps WVU ought to avoid — we discovered that Smart was a detached fan of what the Mountaineers were doing.

“You always try to learn from people who do things at a high level,” Smart said Tuesday at the annual Big 12 media day.

Before the start of last season, the Mountaineers had never in the history of their program finished a season leading the nation in a statistical category. When Duke was cutting down the nets in April, WVU was No. 1 in total steals, steals per game and forced turnovers. Those superlatives, plus another top ranking in offensive rebounds per game, led the Mountaineers to 25 wins and a Sweet 16 appearance.

“I don’t think they got enough attention, actually,” Smart said. “What they did was so unique relative to what other people have done in the last several years of college basketball. The numbers they created in terms of turnovers and steals are impressive.”

As Smart watched, he remembered what Huggins used to do at Cincinnati, when he’d pressure opponents but never with the ferocity or persistence Smart was witnessing. He compared it to his presses that overwhelmed teams first in the Colonial Athletic Association and then in the Atlantic 10, but this was different.

“What they did, particularly late in the year, their guys played with a level of aggressiveness and passion and relentlessness that was as good as you’ve seen in the full-court press since the 1990s, when Kentucky and Arkansas were playing that way,” said Smart, 38, who shocked and trapped people all the way to the 2011 Final Four.

Smart and Iowa State’s Steve Prohm are new to the league this season, and what a league it figures to be. Fortunately for them, their situations are good ones in a conference stacked with favorable rosters.