Got in some good work today! Another big thanks to @DaemenAthletics and @DaemenMBB. #MarchMadness pic.twitter.com/QjdvrKmftP

— WVU Men's Basketball (@WVUhoops) March 14, 2017

West Virginia’s home away from the KeyBank Center is Daemen College, in Amherst, New York. The Mountaineers are working out there — one day more than expected, it turns out — and they’ll have a shootaround today at the arena they’re to play in tomorrow.

These practices are not merely important. They’re scrutinized.

You’ll remember the whispers here before and then the animated quotes after last year’s first-round loss to Stephen F. Austin. Practices were not great. Lackadaisical, according to Nate Adrian. Horrible, according to Bob Huggins.

That was then, and then cannot be now.

Huggins is famously opposed to looking into the past. He’s not nostalgic. He despises the idea you need to lose to learn a lesson, so what value could there be in reaching into the past to take notes on a defeat?

Yet here he is, brandishing last year’s embarrassment and highlighting the teachable moments.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had a team that was that bad in practice that consistently,” he said. “Most people are excited about playing in the NCAA tournament.”

He said his players weren’t, and they paid the ultimate price, a shocking exit that came after a similarly devastating blowout loss to Kentucky the year before. But that came in the Sweet Sixteen, and Huggins isn’t about to let this team wait before it faces consequences.

“I tell them I’m going to throw their ass out of the gym if they’re going to practice like that this time,” he said.

It’s fair to wonder what the disrupted schedule does, positively or negatively, to the Mountaineers.