MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – On Saturday, West Virginia will face a 17-9 Baylor team coming off an impressive, 73-69 victory at 19^th-ranked Iowa State earlier this week.
 
The Bears, now 8-5 in Big 12 play, got 17 points from freshman guard Jared Butler and 14 each from senior guard Makai Mason and junior forward Freddie Gillespie, who made seven of his eight field goal attempts against the Cyclones on Tuesday night.
 
However, the Baylor player Huggins is really impressed with is 6-foot-5, 230-pound freshman forward Mark Vital from Lake Charles, Louisiana.
 
Huggins cautions not to be deceived by Vital's seemingly ordinary numbers this year.
 
"Vital may well be their MVP averaging six or seven points a game because he does everything for them," Huggins said. "He guards. He rebounds. He passes the ball. If you put a big on him, he drives by him. If you put a smaller guy on him, he overpowers him so he's been terrific."
 
Huggins is also impressed with Baylor's backcourt duo of Mason and Butler.
 
If you recall, Mason was tremendous in the Bears' 85-73 victory over the Mountaineers on Jan. 21 when he scored 29 points on 10-of-16 shooting – several of his baskets coming on mid-range pullups off the bounce.
 
West Virginia also had trouble handling 6-7 swing Mario Kegler, who poured in 18 points and grabbed seven rebounds.
 
"I think they're playing extremely well together," Huggins said. "I think this is the most cohesive Baylor team we have gone against. 
 
"They've got people who can score without running a play for them, and I think that's big. Then you can control the game," he added. "They really do a great job of controlling tempo and controlling the game with their guard play."
 
Huggins' youthful and now depleted Mountaineer squad is looking for a way to score one more point than the opposition.
 
After getting blown out against Texas Tech, Texas and Kansas, West Virginia (10-16, 2-11) was hanging in there against first-place Kansas State on Monday night at the Coliseum.
 
WVU used a 7-0 run to tie the game at 42 early in the second half before things came unglued.
 
"We make some unbelievable breakdowns defensively and all of a sudden you look up and it's 52-42," Huggins said. "We're working on making sure we know who we're guarding and maybe stay in front of them. We're going to kind of consolidate things."
 
Huggins is also seeking ways to get more points out of a team that has failed to score more than 53 points in its last four games. In each of those losses, the Mountaineers endured long scoring droughts.
 
"I think with West Virginia, if you watch them, there's always a breaking point where somebody kind of just takes it over," Kansas State coach Bruce Weber said following Monday night's game. "Tennessee, they're playing with them and then all of a sudden … Texas, it was a four-point game at halftime and all of a sudden, it's 16 or 18."
 
Junior forward Lamont West led West Virginia with 16 points against the Wildcats on five-of-11 shooting. He's one player who can take some pressure off of forward Derek Culver, who is now drawing constant double- and triple-teams in the paint. 
 
Culver earned every one of his 11 points and 13 rebounds against Kansas State for his sixth double-double of the year.
 
K-State's strategy to slow down Culver on Monday night was to have three different bigs foul him whenever he got the ball near the basket. Baylor probably doesn't have the interior depth to do that on Saturday, but it's something Huggins expects his freshman to have to deal with the remainder of the season.
 
Culver has attempted 55 free throws in West Virginia's last five games, but has converted only 60 percent of them. For the season, he's made 60-of-105 for 57.1 percent.
 
The Youngstown, Ohio, resident scored 23 in a loss at Texas Tech and has reached double figures in 10 of the 16 games in which he's played this year. He's also topped double-digits in rebounding eight times, which has to put him into consideration for Big 12 rookie of the year honors.
 
Culver and West are the only two Mountaineer regulars averaging double figures. WVU's other three expected starters on Saturday – freshman forward Emmitt Matthews Jr., junior guard Jermaine Haley and freshman guard Brandon Knapper – are averaging just 3.1, 3.6 and 5.5 points per game respectively.
 
As a team, WVU's field goal percentage (40.8) is in danger of dropping below 40 percent for the first time since 1956 when the Mountaineers shot 38.6 percent. 
 
That year, guard Hot Rod Hundley made just 35.6 percent of his 814 field goal attempts – the junior taking nearly four times as many shots as the next closest player, Clayce Kishbaugh, with 248.
 
West Virginia has failed to shoot 40 percent just six other times in school history since field goal attempts were charted – all in the early 1950s.
 
The Mountaineers' shooting percentages in their last four losses this year are 23.1, 35.3, 33.9 and 34.6 percent, and they are shooting only 38.8 percent in Big 12 play this season.
 
"We are shooting the ball at a very low clip, and we need to make some shots," Huggins said. 
 
Saturday's game will tip off at 2 p.m. and will be televised nationally on ESPNU (Anish Shroff and Tim Welsh). 
 
The Mountaineer Sports Network from Learfield IMG College's radio coverage will begin at 1 p.m. on affiliates throughout the Mountain State and online via WVUsports.com and the popular mobile app WVU Gameday.
 
Baylor holds a 9-7 advantage in all-time series play, winning the last three.