The legacy of Jaysean Paige’s 2015-16 season is his scoring. He’s the best off the bench in the Big 12 and the best on a team that today is ranked No. 9 by the coaches and No. 10 by the media. We know about the heat checks, and he and I have laughed about the two times he’s been mad about the arrival of halftime, most recently against Iowa State, spoiling something special.

But when and where he’s scoring has been significant, too. He made two big baskets Saturday at Oklahoma State, pushing leads to eight and then nine points, and more and more Paige is the player Bob Huggins runs plays for when West Virginia needs points.

He’s good on the dribble, oddly and especially when he goes left, and he has a pull-up he really likes to trigger from the elbow. He’s also become quite comfortable on the left side of the floor, and he’s seeking a familiar spot along the baseline from where he can loft and admire that majestic jumper he hit twice Saturday, once when he somehow managed to avoid the rim and the net.

This was not what Paige did last season, which means nothing is more noteworthy than how he’s getting his points this season.

Paige went from WVU’s top 3-point shooter a season ago to one of its most unreliable now, but he also went from a guy who scored three points in the NCAA tournament and had seven games without a point to a player who has led the team in scoring 10 times in 16 Big 12 games and who has failed to get 10 points just eight times — and one was that Texas game when he twisted his right ankle.

He’s not doing it with 3-point shooting, which has been beneficial. He knows as well as anyone else that he’s not making 3s, yet he also knows the Mountaineers need him to hit his average and occasionally explode.

So he’s put it all on a string this season, and he pulls it and give it slack to make it all work. He makes jumpers, and defenders step out to defend him. They get close, and he drives by. Defenders step back to guard against that, and he has room for jumpers.

He’s diversified. You’d think he’s doing his damage with a lot of 3s, a lot of easy scores and a lot of free throws, and he is, but he also has not. At least, not all at once. It’s interchangeable, and the great thing about Paige and how he has scored this season is how he’s mixed up it and flexed his strengths and bypassed his weakness.

Consider this: He’s totaled 40 or more points in back-to-back games six times this season. Buddy Hield is the only Big 12 player averaging 20 points per game. He does a lot of his damage with the 3-pointer. Paige has never made more than three combined 3s in any of the two-game sets. In the first three sets, he made 11, 12 and 18 free throws. Easy to get to 20 or so that way. But In the last three two game sets, he made six, 18 and nine. The 18 includes 14 in one game. The nine includes none Saturday.

You think about that.

Paige set a school record by scoring 34 points off the bench against Iowa State last Monday. He made just one 3-pointer and was 9 for 9 at the free-throw line. Paige scored 17 points against the Cowboys, again with just one 3 but also without a single free-throw attempt. He was 11 for 15 from 2-point range against Iowa State and 7 for 14 against Oklahoma State.

Paige’s scoring is part art and part science and it’s born out of necessity because he’s not making 3s and because his teammates still need him.

A season ago, which was Paige’s first with the Mountaineers after one season at separate junior colleges, Paige attempted 77 2-point shots, 91 3-point shots and 38 free throws.

“I was really disappointed in the fact he didn’t use his athleticism a year ago,” WVU coach Bob Huggins said. “He hung around the 3-point line and didn’t use his athleticism. That’s a conversation he and I have had since he got here.”