PREGAME: Baylor at No. 13 WVU
October 25, 2018 by Tom Bragg
I made it back from Big 12 men’s basketball media day Kansas City by way of Chicago and Pittsburgh (minus some of my luggage – thanks, American Airlines) and slipped down the road to get to Morgantown in time for tonight’s game between the visiting Baylor Bears and the No. 13 West Virginia Mountaineers.
But enough about me, let’s take a quick look at what’s going down here in a few hours at Milan Puskar Stadium in Morgantown.
For starters, the listed starters:
No real surprises here for the Mountaineers. Ex-South Charleston standout Derrek Pitts dinged his knee two weeks ago at Iowa State and is not among the listed two-deep.
How important is this game for West Virginia? After tonight the Mountaineers have four games left on the regular season schedule — at No. 6 Texas, home against TCU, at Oklahoma State and home the day after Thanksgiving against No. 8 Oklahoma. Yes, TCU and Oklahoma State are not what we thought they would be at the start of the season, but with WVU sitting at five wins getting No. 6 this evening and officially becoming bowl eligible seems like something the Mountaineers would like to go ahead and get out of the way with multiple games against top 10 teams still to come.
The big question for WVU entering tonight’s clash with Baylor is which West Virginia team will show up? The Mountaineers checked in somewhere between “really good” and “great” for most of the first month of the season, right up until sometime in the second quarter at Texas Tech last month. Since then, it’s been more like “decent” to “bad” with a not-great homecoming performance on offense the last time they were here against a bad Kansas team and, of course, the beatdown WVU received a few weeks ago at Iowa State.
Is this a great Baylor team? Not even close. But the Bears are good enough to put a scare into good teams — just ask Texas. If WVU trots out more of the same thing we all saw in the weeks prior to last week’s open date, that sixth win might have to wait. Keep in mind, last year Baylor finished 1-11 and West Virginia narrowly escaped Waco with a win. This year’s BU team is better, and WVU will need to be on its game to get the desired result tonight.
As always, I’ll update this post if anything comes up.
LINKS