As it relates to West Virginia basketball, revisiting the past is certainly more fun than experiencing it as it happened. There were some dark days at the Coliseum, when the Mountaineers were bowing out early in postseason appearances and generally bombing in March. This is nuts, but it’s true: WVU went 7-1 in the 2010 postseason and then went 3-9 in the five years that followed and didn’t win one conference tournament game. The win against TCU in last season’s Big 12 quarterfinal ended that streak.

Here’s another oddity…

Twelve players left the team from 2011-14. One has left after the past three seasons. If you wonder, “What’s happened?” it’s easy to point to the press. But “who” might trump “what,” right? Bob Huggins seems to think so. He has players with an edge, players who actually like to practice, players who want to be at WVU, players who are not OK with losing. You couldn’t say that — some of that or all of that — before.

So who are the Mountaineers? They’re 75-26 these past three seasons. They’ve won 38 of 58 against Big 12 teams. They’ve made the Sweet Sixteen one year and were a No. 3 seed the next, and they certainly believe they can have that and more this season.

But WVU is also a team that’s never lost by more than nine points and, believe it or not, had a lead in the second half of every game. They don’t get blown out. They don’t go away. That’s a pretty good representation of the roster.

“I don’t think we have any guys who are scared,” Huggins said. “If there’s one thing we want to recruit, we want to recruit men. We don’t want to recruit a bunch of kids.”