It’s been a volatile week in college basketball. No. 1 Kanas, No. 3 Maryland, No. 4 Michigan State, No. 8 Miami and No. 9 Duke have already lost. No. 5 North Carolina plays North Carolina State tomorrow, No. 6 Villanova is at Georgetown, No. 7 Xavier is at Marquette and No. 10 SMU — college’s lone unbeaten — is at Tulane.

Missing from that top 10? No. 2 Oklahoma, which plays host to No. 11 West Virginia, which on Tuesday became the fourth team to beat a No. 1 this season.

It’s not often a team plays Nos. 1 and 2 in a season, never mind in succession, and the feat of beating both in a row 1is more rare. It hasn’t happened since 1990. I don’t want to say who it was, but I’ll give you a hint: The team’s uniforms were crimson and cream. Yet it’s there for the Mountaineers, who are already a Big 12 contender and can stake a claim for something greater.

If some, many or even all of those top-10 teams playing Saturday win and WVU does the same, WVU’s going to get a wealth of consideration for No. 1. I don’t think it’ll happen, because all four of those teams are higher in the RPI with a stronger strength of schedule — I also think it’d have to come down to WVU or only one other team for enough voters to make it happen — but it certainly could happen, because it’s January and polling is a more of a weekly or week-to-week grade. It’s not March, when seeding is a season-long evaluation.

The other four games will happen in a vacuum, so let’s think a moment about WVU v. Oklahoma. The Sooners are very good, but they are not a bad matchup for these Mountaineers. They do not force turnovers and they commit too many themselves. They take — and make — a lot of jump shots and get much of their offense out of sets. They use three or four bench players and don’t ask much of them. They give up drives and they allow free throws (but they don’t foul a lot).

Oklahoma’s also had a whale of a start to the Big 12: top-10, pre-nose dive Iowa State, three overtimes at Kansas, Kansas State, which we can agree is a root canal, and Bedlam at Oklahoma State that should have been easier than it was. (The Sooners played a part with 19 turnovers, three in the final 62 seconds, each of those by Buddy Hield. He had 10 turnovers, and the ball was stolen from him eight times. Eight!)

Being home will help. The crowd knows a win makes Oklahoma No. 1, and WVU was shaky at times at K-State and TCU, but the Mountaineers aren’t going to make this easy for the Sooners. I don’t want to say the press is back, but only because I’m not sure it was ever gone. It dipped at the end of a long road trip, but WVU returned home and took a quick refresher course that reminded the players of what they’re supposed to do, which Bob Huggins was oddly and wonderfully eager to explain.

The Mountaineers keep track of how often they get their hands on the ball, whether with a steal, a tip or a deflection, but who’s active isn’t as important as where things are happening. That’s why Huggins is partial to a diagram that splits the court into eight parts – baseline to free-throw line, free-throw line to mid-court, mid-court to free-throw line, free-throw line to baseline, and those quadrants split in half.

“What I want to know is where they’re entering the ball and where it’s going from there,” Huggins said.