Breaking Down WVU's Resume & What's Left on the Schedule
At 14-9 overall and 3-7 in Big 12 Conference play, the West Virginia Mountaineers have a little bit of work to do if they want to go dancing in March. Fortunately for them, they will have several opportunities to pick up key wins along the way to strengthen the resume.
All eight of West Virginia's remaining games qualify as Quad 1 or Quad 2 games, six of which are Quad 1. You can assume that any game that WVU plays in the Big 12 Conference tournament will also qualify as such as all 10 members of the league currently rank in the top 71.
"I think we're going to get in the NCAA Tournament," Huggins said confidently. "I think we'll win games in the NCAA Tournament. How many? I don't know. But I think we will win games. I think we will advance. You can look at it a couple different ways. You can look at it as it's a new beginning. It's a second chance. Everybody that goes to college wants to play in the NCAA Tournament. Hell, I wanted to play in the NCAA Tournament. I don't have any doubt whatsoever that we can get in the NCAA Tournament."
So, what does West Virginia's resume look like as of today?
Below, I categorized each win and loss into the proper Quad. The number you see in parenthesis is that team's current NET ranking which is what the NCAA goes off of to determine which Quad the game falls under.
West Virginia is currently No. 20 in the NET Rankings.
Quadrant 1: Home 1-30, Neutral 1-50, Away 1-75
Wins: Pitt (55), Florida (43), TCU (17), Texas Tech (71).
Losses: Purdue (4), Xavier (24), Kansas State (21), Oklahoma State (36), Kansas (8), Baylor (11), Oklahoma (61), Texas (9), TCU (17).
Overall: 4-9
Remaining games: vs Iowa State, at Texas, at Baylor, at Kansas, at Iowa State, vs Kansas State
Quadrant 2: Home 31-75, Neutral 51-100, Away 76-135
Wins: UAB (72), Oklahoma (61), Auburn (31).
Losses:
Overall: 3-0
Remaining games: vs Texas Tech, vs Oklahoma State
Quadrant 3: Home 76-160, Neutral 101-200, Away 135-240
Wins: Penn
Losses:
Overall: 1-0
Remaining games: N/A
Quadrant 4: Home 161-353, Neutral 201-353, Away 241-353
Wins: Mount St. Mary's (280), Morehead State (239), Portland State (244), Navy (185), Buffalo (167), Stony Brook (325).
Losses:
Overall: 6-0
Remaining games: N/A
"You would think that 18 [wins] would get us in in that we're playing in the hardest league in the country," Huggins said. "And we played pretty well in the non-conference, but who knows? Our non-conference wins are very good. UAB is playing well. You go right down through the list, I think we've played much better in non-conference. We beat Auburn. [Florida] just had a big win over Tennessee and Tennessee was what? Two in the country? And we didn't just beat 'em, we significantly beat 'em. So, yeah, we've got great non-conference wins. We've just stubbed our toe in the conference."
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