You are looking live at the Coliseum, site of today’s GRUDGE MATCH between No. 9 West Virginia and teetering Texas Tech. Today’s game is sold out, and the student section has its crib sheet as well as foam fingers.

I find the finger poignant today, because there was some finger-pointing yesterday. It was the first time the Mountaineers have met with the media since Monday night’s loss at Kansas. Well, check that. It was the second time. The first was the postgame postmortem, and that was odd. Ordinarily, Bob Huggins talks to reporters in a news conference setting, and the players are available before or after that outside the locker room.

It was different Monday. Huggins went to his news conference with Nate Adrian and Esa Ahmad. First time I remember that happening in a non-invitational regular-season game. I don’t know that that means anything, but maybe it does. Because when Huggins entertained reporters Friday, try as he might, he was not exactly subtle.

“I’m going to have a lot of things to say when I retire — how’s that?” Huggins said Friday. “A lot of things to say. For now, I’m going to save my money so I can retire.”

Commenting on officiating is prohibited, and violations can draw reprimands and fines. Huggins censored himself, but there was no mistaking the Mountaineers (20-6, 8-5 Big 12) were upset with the loss as well as how they lost.

“We turned the ball over too much, but — I can’t say a whole lot of things about what happened the other day, but you can’t guard guys out of bounds. That’s illegal,” Huggins said. “There’s just a lot of stuff that went on that shouldn’t have went on. You can’t plan for that.”

I wasn’t planning for that.

My plan yesterday was to go in and do something on close games whilst exploring that “crunch-time five” angle. Texas Tech has nine losses and counts defeats by two, seven, nine, four, four, one and one. It also has wins by six, eight, six, one, one, seven and one. That’s 14 of 26 games decided by single digits, and we know WVU’s style. This seemed like a tidy topic, and I did some work on that … but everything went down a different road.

The Mountaineers are mad about the way the game was adjudicated, and Huggins, I thought, carefully worked his way around a delicate topic. It’s basically a taboo, and Huggins has oftentimes put the onus on reporters to say something if they see something. On Friday, he pointed out a few things, namely the five-seconds call when Frank Mason was over the baseline.

Watch the feet of the guy defending inbounds. This is what's allowed in the Big 12, and this is why kU loses early in the NCAAs, every year. pic.twitter.com/q8vraiRleq

— Ben DuBose (@BenDuBose) February 14, 2017

“You can’t plan for all that stuff, and it all happened boom-boom-boom-boom-boom,” Huggins said. “To think it doesn’t mentally affect our guys, it does. Obviously, we made some mistakes. We weren’t the only ones who made mistakes.

“You can’t line them up and say, ‘They’re going to guard you out of bounds now. They’re going to be on the other side of the line now chasing you around.’ You can’t plan for that.”

(Aside: This is an abridged clip. The official, Ray Natili, does count to three … but on the broadcast, you see Phillip take the ball out of the basket and put it on the ground and give himself and his teammates a moment. Natili starts his count and does indeed count to two. It’s the same cadence, too, and 2 + 3 = 5. I don’t have a problem with that. But he’s watching Mason. That’s what ought to bug WVU.)

WVU and Texas Tech teams played into overtime before. It’s fair to reason it’s going to be competitive again today. There have been 65 conference games so far, and 47 have been decided by 10 points or less. These two account for 17 of those. WVU is 0-3 in overtime. There have been three other overtime games in Big 12 play. The Mountaineers also count two losses when they lead entering the final minute and three when they lead by 10 points or more. All of that is in Big 12 play.

Consider that and the 2-4 record in games decided by four points or less, and WVU has to wonder what might be … especially after Monday.

“You live with it so much better when it’s your fault,” Huggins said. “I screw up and I apologize to them. They screw up and they apologize to me. This one, there are no apologies.”

I’ve never seen WVU this transparent about the topic. Huggins again said the officials aren’t made to be accountable — “It’s a wonderful thing to be protected.” — and even decided to call this goaltending Friday because there’s nothing anyone can do to him about it. It’s not hard to take the temperature here, but it’s also easy to see what the Mountaineers are going to try to do with it.

“Officials are fond of saying, ‘Let it go. Let it go. Let it go.’ Well, yeah, you can let it go. It doesn’t mean to you what it means to us,” Huggins said. “You say, ‘Let it go,’ and you probably do. You go home and pet your dog and kiss your wife and go to bed and wake up and do it again the next day. We can’t do that. It stays with me.

“I’m kind of firmly of the belief that I want an edge. I want our guys to play with an edge. I told them [Thursday], ‘Let’s just go and win out and play them again in the conference tournament.’ Hopefully then all that won’t happen. If it does, this time I won’t be around to watch.”

I think that’s pretty clear, no?