If you're a WVU basketball fan, it's a fun time for you - whether you follow the Mountaineer men, women or both.
Go ahead. Check the Top 25 poll of either gender. West Virginia's men are No. 11 in the Associated Press poll. The school's women are No. 12. That's an average ranking of No. 11.5.
Pretty impressive, right? And the teams' stories are pretty similar.
Understand that if you look at the non-conference schedule for either, you'll be mostly bored. Yes, the men won at Virginia, but their non-conference schedule is ranked No. 335 nationally. And then there's that of the women. Although 12-0, the best coach Mike Carey can point to are narrow victories over Auburn (56-52) and Ole Miss (66-61). The former is 9-4 and the latter 10-2.
Yet poll voters love both teams. Both have serious national respect.
There's just one major difference between the two.
"We had a couple injuries in the last game," Carey said on Tuesday. "Katrina Pardee and Alexis Brewer were both hurt and that's not good news. We were already limited off the bench and now we're really, really limited."
Indeed, Bob Huggins' Mountaineers have been fine physically. Those of Carey, not so much.
"We're very limited," said the women's coach. "That makes five [injuries] now. Before the season we lost three [players]. Crazy [stuff]. We've had three knee injuries, possibly a fourth and a nose [injury]. It's crazy. One of those years. All five were going to play."
Pardee, a 5-foot-9 sophomore guard, has started all 12 games so far and was averaging 7.5 points and 20.9 minutes played. She had surgery on Tuesday for the busted nose. Alexis Brewer, another 5-9 sophomore guard, had the knee injury in the Mount St. Mary's game. Doctors are still checking it.
"Coming into the season I thought we were going to be really, really good," Carey said. "I thought we were going to be deep. We had a lot of good young players coming in. We had a junior college point guard coming in. Then we had three [Nia Staples, Aisha Edwards and Krys McCune] get hurt before the season. They are all out for the year.
"I was just praying we could get through this last non-conference game without any injuries and I'll be a son of a gun if we didn't have two within two minutes of each other. It's a shame, but it's part of the game. We just have to move on."
Edwards was the point guard of which Carey spoke. She was a second-team junior college All-America pick out of Florida.
So now?
"I don't know, man," Carey said. "I don't know what to expect. We're going to have to move some people to different positions. And we don't have much of a bench. So that's not good news heading into conference play."
WVU tips off the Big 12 schedule on Thursday at TCU for a 7:30 p.m. game before heading to Kansas State for a 2 p.m. Sunday game. The league schedule will be a serious upgrade in competition.
"Our non-conference schedule wasn't as strong as we would have liked, but we only have two seniors on this team," Carey said. "One [Lanay Montgomery] starts and the other [Desiree Rhodes] doesn't play a lot.
"We're trying to beef that up for next year."
For now, Carey will rely on standout Tynice Martin, a former ESPN Top 100 player, who is averaging 18.5 points. She was the Big 12's Freshman of the Year of last season - the first Mountaineer woman to win such an award since Meg Bulger did it in 2004 in the Big East.
"Tynice Martin is a great player," Carey said. "She's one of the better players in the conference. She's playing so many minutes now that she's wearing down a little, but she's a great player.
"Lanay Montgomery is also doing very well. Teana Muldrow is doing very well. And Chania Ray is out of position, but she's doing very well for us too. She's really a two-guard playing the [point]."
Muldrow, a junior forward, is averaging 13.9 points and 8.2 rebounds. Montgomery, a 6-5 senior center, is averaging 12.4 and 9.8. Ray, a 5-8 junior, has 70 assists already and is averaging 7.8 points.
Notice that most are returning to next season's WVU team?
"Absolutely," Carey said.
Hopes should be high then. Heading into this season, West Virginia was picked to finish fourth in the Big 12, according to the league's poll, behind Baylor, Texas and Oklahoma. BU, however, is currently No. 3 in the Top 25, while WVU is No. 12, second among the league's teams. (Texas is No. 16, while OU is No. 24.)
"Baylor, in my opinion, has the most talent I've seen on their team, from top to bottom, since I've been in the Big 12," Carey said. "Texas and Oklahoma are very talented. But then Texas Tech is much improved. Kansas... Everybody is getting better."
Now Carey is just hoping his team gets better - in regard to health.
"I'm not making excuses," said the coach. "We're just going to have our hands tied a little bit. Hopefully, we can get both [Pardee and Brewer] back. I just can't make a lot of substitutions now and we can't do a lot of things defensively because people will be playing 40 minutes."
He paused.
"Practice yesterday was crazy," he said. "We moved people to different positions. It's going to be chaos here for a while."
Poll voters, though, certainly have faith in the coach.
Should be a fun team to watch.