West Virginia’s pre-NCAA tournament resume this year was remarkably similar to last year’s: Second place in the Big 12, runner-up in the Big 12 tournament, top-four seed in the NCAA field.

And what did that get them last year? A loss on the first day, a weekend back on campus, a long offseason and regular reminders about the way 2016 ended. It could not happen again, and it was odd to me to see Huggins tilt the rear view mirror and talk to openly and often about the lousy recovery after losing the Big 12 final last year, about the poor practices, about the comeuppance at the hands of Stephen F. Austin.

It made for a tame storyline, but it mattered. It worked. On Thursday, the Mountaineers found themselves in a familiar spot: Favorited against an undersized team from an overlooked conference. They did what they could not do last season by doing what they did not do last season.

“It was a tough time for us last year,” said guard Tarik Phillip, who led the Mountaineers with 16 points and made all seven of his free-throw attempts. “We dwelled on it the whole summer, then starting practice and through the season. It was a tough loss for us. We didn’t want to repeat it.”

A new season brought about a similar situation. WVU was once again a bigger team, longer and taller than the opposition, and Bucknell would play small around 6-foot-8 conference player of the year Nana Foulland to utilize its strengths.

This time, though, the Mountaineers dominated the areas where they thought they could dominate. They outrebounded Bucknell 42-32, outscored the Bison 42-32 in the paint and 20-6 on second chance points and had their bench outscore Bucknell’s 37-5.

WVU led for the final 35 minutes, 3 seconds.

“I think we started to get it back a little bit,” forward Nathan Adrian said. “Hopefully we can continue to do that. I don’t want to jinx it, but hopefully we can keep scoring.”