MORGANTOWN - West Virginia coach Bob Huggins has a team ranked No. 14 by the media and No. 12 by the coaches. It was in the top 10 of both polls the previous two weeks and actually first reached those heights after a loss.
The Mountaineers share first place in the top-rated conference in the country with the top-ranked team in the country, an Oklahoma team that was one shot and two points better than WVU at home last month.
West Virginia's RPI was No. 13 Wednesday and the strength of schedule was No. 31. Bettors have established the team as the favorite in eight of the final nine regular-season games.
By those gauges and many others, Huggins has a basketball team at West Virginia that's already accomplished plenty halfway through the Big 12 schedule, but the hardest thing he needs to do is make sure the Mountaineers keep believing they aren't any good.
But if WVU can beat No. 1 (Kansas on Jan. 12) and later win in a building where it's never won (Iowa State's Hilton Coliseum on Tuesday), a place where two top-five teams have already fallen this season, who's to say he and they can't do it?
"There's a lot of things we don't do well," Huggins said following Tuesday night's 81-76 road win against No. 13 Iowa State, "but we compete."
Ours is a world obsessed with aesthetics and optics, and there's Huggins, judging contestants at a beauty pageant, enduring songs sung off pitch, wincing through monotone monologues and commending them for their personalities.
It's worked so far, and he's withheld praise and handed out critiques on the way to an 18-4 record and a 7-2 mark in conference play. Every now and then, he gets help in the form of an empty performance at home or a lopsided loss on the road.
But sooner or later the many mantras about disrespect or no respect, about being underrated and overlooked, have to go away. The Mountaineers will understand and maybe even admit that they're all right.
"I don't get caught up in it too much, but I've got family members who care and who watch," forward Devin Williams said. "We won this game, but I can tell you ESPN will still be showing freaking Texas and Iowa State more than showing what we've done."
ESPN, mind you, has touted Huggins as an overdue Hall of Famer this season. It led SportsCenter the morning of the game at then-No. 2 Oklahoma with a preview of the matchup and a gigantic "Press Virginia" graphic in the background. The Mountaineers probably didn't see any of that, but even if they did, it doesn't matter.
They see what they want to see, and that's a strength.
"We haven't had any respect since the season started," Williams said, rebooting the bad mood WVU was in when it was left out of the preseason polls despite 25 wins and a Sweet 16 appearance last season and an abundance of players due back this season.
"Regardless of all the numbers out there, regardless of what we've done, we still don't have any respect. So we've just got to stay together and be who we are."
They are hopelessly and wonderfully naive and contradictory, and it keeps their motors running. The engineer, of course, is Huggins, and he pulled the chord Tuesday morning.
He'd picked up his local newspaper Sunday morning and saw the headline on the sports page that read "Mess Virginia," a label that covered stories written about losses by WVU's men's and women's teams. There were some passages in an accompanying column that didn't sit well with Huggins, never mind that columns are opinions and the opinions of coaches and columnists don't always marry well.
"We were 17-4, No. 12 in the country, and the headline is 'Mess Virginia,' " Huggins said, pointing out how accomplished and properly appreciated his team is at the very moment he highlights how they aren't properly appreciated. "They kind of used that as motivation."
So Huggins had some underlings make copies of the front page and slip them under hotel room doors Tuesday morning. When they met later, he read some of his least favorite lines.
How's that for a wake-up call?
"He asked us what we were going to do and how we were going to respond to the loss Saturday," Williams said. "This was a great way to bounce back."
It was unexpected, and the Mountaineers, who again played without suspended starting forward Jon Holton, ought to know and cherish that.
WVU does lead the Big 12 with four conference road wins and, in an ultimate sign of legitimacy, has come to be as despised on the road as it is adored at home. But the Cyclones had won 32 of 34 at Hilton Coliseum. No. 1 Oklahoma and No. 4 Kansas lost there last month. WVU had lost by two, 17 and then 20 points in three visits.
Things looked grim in the wake of Saturday's 88-71 loss at Florida in the Big 12 /SEC Challenge and with games approaching at home Saturday night against No. 15 Baylor, which was 3-0 against WVU last season, and at No. 7 Kansas, another place where visitors seemingly never win.
But that's all changed, and with it maybe WVU's self-awareness has, too.
"Nobody expected us to win this, and to be honest, nobody expects us to win the Baylor game and the Kansas game," Williams said. "It's a tough stretch coming up, but all everyone can think about is last year and how we performed. Our record shows this is a whole different year and a whole different team."