WVU v. Oklahoma: Someone will be No. 1
January 16, 2016 by Mike Casazza
You are looking live at the Lloyd Noble Center, site of the latest Big 12 prize fight. They have towels!
I picked up a copy of The Oklahoman this morning. And then I read it. There’s a useful story about Oklahoma’s starting lineup, the core of which will start for the 84th straight time today, but there isn’t a mention of what’s on the line today.
If the Sooners win, they’re No. 1. True, they were kinda sorta No. 1 two weeks ago, when the coaches had them up top and above Kansas and the Associated Press had it the other way around, but that was fleeting and foiled by a loss to the Jayhawks. A triumph today most certainly clinches both top spots.
The last time Oklahoma was No. 1 in the AP was 1990.
Segue!
That’s the last time a team beat two top-two teams in succession, a feat WVU has a chance to match today. It should be noted, though, that the Sooners beat No. 1 in back-to-back games that season.
The Mountaineers can make a case for No. 1 today, and they’ll surely get a bunch of votes if they do indeed prevail. But No. 5 North Carolina and No. 6 Villanova have already won today and No. 7 Xavier is on its way. No. 10 SMU, which has a postseason ban today and isn’t ranked in the coaches’ poll, plays tomorrow at sub-.500 Tulane.
As you may already know, all four of those teams are above WVU in the RPI and have a better strength of schedule rating, but none of them have achieved anything like what the Mountaineers might do, and that could be enough to give the school its first No. 1 ranking since March of 1958.
The focus, as you might expect, is somewhere else.
No team has beaten Nos. 1 and 2 in back-to-back games since Kansas in 1989. A year later, Oklahoma, of all teams, beat No. 1-ranked teams in consecutive contests. The last team to even have a shot at one or the other was Missouri in 1997.
“Honestly,” Huggins reiterated, “I haven’t paid a whole lot of attention. I did my radio show [Thursday] and they had the Michigan State-Iowa game on, and Iowa beat Michigan State, but we spend our time on us. When we don’t have other things to do, we’re watching film more than watching what goes on around the country.”
If nothing else, Huggins confessed a win puts his team in a better position to win the conference — or at least contend for the title deep into the schedule — and that would address the ultimate goal of securing a high seed for the NCAA Tournament.
WVU already has a win against the Jayhawks. A victory today gives the Mountaineers a two-game lead on the Sooners in the standings, and Oklahoma, picked second in the Big 12’s preseason coaches poll, plays at WVU on Feb. 20, three days after playing at Texas Tech. Kansas won at Texas Tech Saturday and couldn’t pull off a win at the Coliseum three days later.
“Obviously, you want to win all of them that you can,” Huggins said. “I just think in this league it’s very difficult to go to Ames [Iowa State] and win. Well, Baylor’s done that. Does that give them an advantage? Probably, in some regard.
“But it’s hard to go to Texas Tech and win, and Kansas has gone to Texas Tech and won. I think at first we were the only one that had a road win, and we had two. Then after the next round of games, a lot of the away teams won.”
We’re all winners today.