MORGANTOWN, W.Va. -- West Virginia University basketball coach John Beilein says his team loves putting on the blue jerseys. Wearing dark uniforms represents the higher seeded team in the NCAA tournament and signifies the underdog role his 23-10 team has come to embrace this year. Other than perhaps Wisconsin-Milwaukee, there isn't a more unlikely team left in the NCAA tournament than West Virginia.

"I don't know if there is an advantage to it but we like wearing the dark colors because of the fact our kids I think when they're the hunters rather than the hunted they just really perform at a higher level," Beilein said. "That's the type of personalities that they all have."

West Virginia will be playing its seventh game in a span of about 15 days against Texas Tech Thursday night. Beilein doesn't see that being a big problem.

"After we played four games in four nights at the Big East tournament and two of them went right down to the wire I think we're okay," he said. "Everybody has a difficult schedule right now and we did give them a couple of days to rest. Monday we had a very light workout and Tuesday we had a real good workout and we had a real good workout just now so I think we should be okay. With the two and a half minute timeouts because of CBS and the magnitude of these games we have time to regroup."

Beilein is extremely impressed with Texas Tech's athletic pair of guards Ronald Ross and Jarrius Jackson.

"I love my backcourt but this is a dream backcourt," he said. "They take care of the basketball, they don't shoot it unless they're open; all they care about is winning. They guard, they make sure the big guys touch the ball … they're just beautiful to watch play. They're a lot like our guys. A lot of our guys didn't have those scholarships to the big schools and they want to prove it everyday that they belong.

"You can't talk enough about that as far as the kids you recruit who try to prove everyday that they're good enough and you can win with them. That's a whole lot of fun to coach," Beilein noted.

The coach admitted Wednesday that he once considered going to a younger lineup during his team's tough stretch that saw his team lose five of six games.

"We were close at one time where the season might have gone under from the standpoint that we had to either move on with younger kids or make some changes or change positions," Beilein said. "I don't know where it was but when we won at Providence and we won against Pitt at home everything began to change."

Beilein is particularly pleased for his group of upperclassmen that have gone from a losing record in 2003 to where it's at right now.

"They've all been through an awful lot," he said. "We went to Europe this year and it was sort of a culmination of three years of them working together. They are as different as night and day. They came from all over the world virtually. When we first got to West Virginia it was a bit chaotic to say the least."

Beilein says his goal when he came to WVU was to recruit good kids first and good basketball players second.

"What we tried to do was to get good kids in here that we could grow with," he said. "This is a funny statement but (kids) that we could lose with. The only way you're going to get better in our situation was to lose and realize what you have to do to get better. With many kids you lose and you get worse because they point fingers and blame somebody else. These kids get better when they lose. You don't want to lose too much but they get better. Through all those hardships of those first two years trying to get their heads about the water they became a pretty good basketball team."

Same goes for Texas Tech, according to Beilein.

"They value the basketball, they're a low turnover team, they share the basketball and there is a multitude of passes involved before they take their first shot," Beilein said. "Even though we don't run a complete freelance motion like they do it is the same principle."

After closely studying Knight's Texas Tech team, Beilein just marvels at his system.

"It's much more when you watch it," he said. "It's very, very difficult because they're playing off you -- you're not playing off them. Truthfully, we try and do the same thing but it's not the same. They're difficult prep but that's the way it's going to be this time of year – everybody is difficult."