What a ride so far for West Virginia. A 1-1 record two weeks ago pushed the Mountaineers up from Nos. 11 and 9 in the media and coaches polls, respectively, to Nos. 6 and 7. A 1-1 run this past week dropped WVU to No. 9 in the polls released today.

That means another week and two more games in the top 10, which is still a new experience for WVU and one the players are learning from under the gun.

“There’s a target on our backs,” WVU guard Jaysean Paige said. “Everyone wants to beat a top-ranked team, but we worked hard to get where we’re at now, and now we know we’ve got to keep working hard to make sure it pays off.”

If nothing else, those words and Saturday’s performance are signs of progress. WVU’s first time out as a top-10 team was utterly forgettable, except that Huggins met with his team a day after the loss to Texas and spent 2 hours, 15 minutes of a three-hour practice reviewing everything that went wrong.

And even then, the Mountaineers only made it through the first half of the 56-49 loss.

“I knew we weren’t ready to play, but I didn’t know what to do to fix it,” Huggins said. “I tried. I tried to talk to them about how we put so much time and so much effort into this in terms of working at it and doing what you’re supposed to do as a team, but obviously it didn’t work.”

Not on Wednesday. It was a different story Saturday, but it was a different experience, too. This is new for these Mountaineers. They are used to taunts and insults on the road. They did take down six ranked teams and three top-10 opponents these past two seasons. They have wanted to be up where they are now, but they hadn’t lived that life before the Longhorns and then the Red Raiders let them know what it would be like.

“It comes with games like this,” WVU forward Jon Holton said. “Every time we played Kansas in the past, they were a top-10 team and we came out and we played hard, so I guess that’s the feeling. Teams come out and try to play harder than us to beat us.”