The nation’s No. 1 team playing inside the Coliseum doesn’t happen too often - just seven times counting tonight’s game against Baylor.

 

Having two top-10 teams squaring off inside the 46-year-old arena is also a rare occurrence, only the fifth time that has ever happened.

 

The game is a sellout - on a week night - which is also uncommon.

 

Therefore, here are five things to watch for tonight as you get ready for No. 10 West Virginia vs. No. 1 Baylor, airing at 7 p.m. on ESPN2.

 

 

The Bears are big. Once West Virginia gets beyond the mid-court line and works the ball close to the basket, Mountaineer bigs Nathan Adrian, Brandon Watkins, Sagaba Konate and Elijah Macon are going to be staring at Jo Lual-Acuil Jr., Johnathan Motley and then Terry Maston when he comes off the bench.

 

Acuil stands 7-feet tall. Motley is a long 6-foot-10, while Maston goes 6-foot-8, 230. These guys have been responsible for 78 of Baylor’s 89 blocked shots this year.

 

How big are these guys? Think Syracuse big during the Jim Boeheim, Big East days.

 

“When you can pretty much touch hands across the floor you’re going to cover some ground and they cover some ground,” West Virginia coach Bob Huggins noted. “(Taurean) Prince was a good player for them but he’s not as long as Motley. You can’t simulate their length.”

 

When you’ve got big guys to protect the rim, that means the smaller guys in front of them can gamble more often because they’ve got guys behind them that can cover up some of their mistakes.

 

It will be interesting to see how Huggins chooses to attack Baylor’s great length. Of course, making open shots when West Virginia gets them will be helpful too.

 

 

West Virginia’s strength is scoring margin (+28.7 ppg.), turning teams over (24.3 tpg.) and steals (12.8) - all tops in the country.

 

West Virginia’s M.O. is speeding teams up and getting more possessions and more scoring opportunities than the opposition.

 

Baylor’s strength is slowing teams down to a halt. The Bears are fourth in scoring defense (58.3 ppg.), sixth in field goal percentage defense (37.3%), 13^th in blocked shots (5.9) and 15^th in rebounding margin (+8.2).

 

“We’ve got to do a good job in the full court,” Huggins noted. “And they’re going to play man, too. They pretty much play man after a miss and zone after a make. And he’s played some box in one. They give you a lot to get ready for.”

 

Generally speaking, if it’s an up-and-down, transition-oriented game that should bode well for West Virginia.

 

If it’s a half-court game pitting one half-court defense against the other, that will likely favor Baylor.

 

“We’ve got to do a good job in full court to try and speed them up,” Huggins admitted.

 

 

Before the calendar flipped to December 30, when West Virginia faced Oklahoma State in its Big 12 opener, Press Virginia was turning teams over at a 26.3 per-game clip.

 

The Mountaineers were also averaging 16.7 steals per game.

 

Since then, the turnovers have been a little harder to manufacture. Oklahoma State turned the ball over 19 times in West Virginia’s 92-75 win, Texas Tech turned it over just 13 times in the Red Raiders’ one-point overtime victory in Lubbock and TCU had 18 miscues in its 12-point loss to the Mountaineers last Saturday.

 

West Virginia will likely need to generate at least that many turnovers tonight against Baylor - and not turn the ball back over to Baylor when they do get them - to get those extra possessions Huggins wants.

 

And Baylor will turn it over a little bit.

 

The Bears had 16 turnovers in wins against VCU and Sam Houston State, 15 against Jackson State and 13 turnovers in all three Big 12 games against Oklahoma, Iowa State and Oklahoma State to begin conference play.

 

Getting live-ball turnovers will be even better for the Mountaineers.

 

 

A few years ago, Huggins made it a point to hit the recruiting trail hard in search of athletic forwards who could bounce it, shoot from the wing and score in transition.

 

That was an area where athletic teams in the past such as Baylor had a distinct advantage against West Virginia, and was one of the reasons the Bears were able to win three straight games at the Coliseum during a two-year stretch from 2013 to 2015.

 

Now, the Mountaineers have 6-foot-8-inch, 225-pound sophomore forward Esa Ahmad, who is averaging 12.9 points, 4.9 rebounds and is shooting an impressive 55.1 percent from the floor. Backing up Ahmad is 6-foot-8-inch, 215-pound redshirt freshman forward Lamont West, who is averaging 6.9 points and 2.2 rebounds and has made 15 3s in just 11 minutes of action coming off the bench.

 

These guys were brought here, in part, to offset some of the areas teams such as Baylor, Kansas and Oklahoma took advantage of in the past.

 

Now Ahmad and West don’t have to be heroes tonight, but they’ve got to hold their own against Motley, Acuil, Ishmail Wainright and Co.

 

 

One of West Virginia’s mantras all season long has been “our 12 are better than your eight.”

 

Well, youth, inexperience and overall performance has pared that number down to “our 10 are better than your eight.”

 

Huggins used just nine players in the Mountaineers’ Big 12-opening win at Oklahoma State, and he used 10 in the last two games against Texas Tech and TCU.

 

One of his growing concerns is overusing valuable and versatile four-man Nathan Adrian. The senior is logging a team-high 28.1 minutes per game and has already played 110 minutes in West Virginia’s first three Big 12 games.

 

Huggins believes that has impacted his offense a little bit.

 

Baylor basically plays eight guys, with Motley and junior guard Manu Lecomte averaging better than 30 minutes per game in conference play so far.

 

West Virginia has preyed on wearing teams down, Huggins frequently citing the “cumulative effect” of his 40-minute, full-court, pressure style.

 

Yesterday, however, he added this caveat: “It’s wearing down the right ones, though,” he admitted. “We want to wear down the right ones and I think we can make a pretty good attempt to do that.”

 

We’ll see.

 

And we’ll see you tonight at a jam-packed WVU Coliseum to see if West Virginia can get another rare victory over No. 1.

 

If so, it would be only the fifth in school history.