KANSAS CITY – That hustling, scrappy, have-your-buddy's-back West Virginia basketball team that we saw on display in Wednesday night's win over favored Oklahoma in the opening game of the Phillips 66 Big 12 Championship was non-existent a month ago when the Mountaineers last played Texas Tech.
 
The now seventh-ranked Red Raiders did as they pleased in Lubbock, Texas, back on Feb. 4 in a 31-point win over West Virginia – Tech's largest margin of victory ever in Big 12 Conference play.
 
The Red Raiders out-muscled and out-hustled West Virginia to the point where seldom used walk-on players got some serious court time late in the game.
 
That day,Texas Tech got every 50-50 ball, pounded the Mountaineers on the glass and completely manhandled West Virginia's young and inexperienced backcourt.
 
WVU's 9-for-39 shooting performance was one of its worst since joining the Big 12 in 2013.
 
It was clearly the low point of the season for West Virginia.
 
But since then, a lot has changed for the 13-19 Mountaineers.
 
Two players who consumed a combined 49 minutes in that albatross in Lubbock are no longer on the team.
 
Freshman center Derek Culver continues to emerge in the post and his two backups, Logan Routt and Andrew Gordon, combined to score 12 points and grab eight rebounds last night against Oklahoma after Culver got into early foul trouble.
 
Junior forward Lamont West didn't shoot the ball particularly well against the Sooners, but he's once again playing with the same type of confidence and swagger he did earlier in his career when he was considered one of the conference's better 3-point shooters.
 
Guards Jordan McCabe and Jermaine Haley have nine more games under their belts in the backcourt, and the nine players who were dressed for yesterday's game are beginning to understand the importance of sharing the basketball.
 
The Mountaineers also did a much better job of defending, the evidence being Oklahoma's 71 points and 45.2 shooting percentage.
 
Whether that will be enough to knock off tournament-favorite Texas Tech tonight remains to be seen, but if West Virginia goes down this time, it will not go down without a fight.
 
"We're just going to play hard and see what happens," veteran coach Bob Huggins said following Wednesday's 72-71 victory. "We played (Texas Tech) really well in Morgantown. It was a really close game. Hopefully it's a close game."
 
In order for that to happen, West Virginia is going to have to shoot the ball much better than it did in Lubbock and its guards are going to have to hang on to it much better than they did when Matt Mooney, Davide Moretti and Big 12 Player of the Year Jarrett Culver really got up into them.
 
WVU also needs to figure out a way to slow down Culver, a 6-foot-6 guard with NBA Lottery potential.
 
"They're really good," Huggins said. "What do they got, the No. 1-ranked defense in the country or something like that? Culver is the Player of the Year in the league and Chris (Beard) is the two-time Coach of the Year in the league, so they've got a lot of components."
 
"Texas Tech is a very good team," McCabe added. "We know, obviously from the regular season what they did to us at home where we thought we had a chance to win the game. We went to their place, and it kind of got out of control. 
 
"So the biggest thing is we're a completely different team from when we were playing in Lubbock. I think all the guys in the locker room know that and just like going into this first game against Oklahoma, our mindset was it's a new season," McCabe said. "We've kind of been waiting for it because we've gotten better each and every day since we've gotten things figured out as a team."
 
An emboldened West said that West Virginia owes the Red Raiders a payback. His coach says Lamont can sometimes can get a little carried away with what he says.
 
"I don't know what Lamont thinks, man? I don't know if Lamont knows what Lamont thinks," Huggins said. 
 
At a minimum, this young team is displaying some confidence that was non-existent a month ago. Their coach always preaches "have no fear" and that's half the battle.
 
They're also having fun and playing hard out on the court now.
 
"They're excited about playing together, and they're trying to do the things that we ask them to do that we had other guys do," Huggins said. "I think when you're playing four freshmen like we are, if they continue to get better, I think it bodes well for the following years."
 
There is also the possibility of West Virginia having an extra player ready to go for tonight's game. There were whispers in the Mountaineer locker room after last night's Oklahoma win that injured forward Sagaba Konate might be available for action tonight.
 
Konate, who has been sidelined with a knee injury for the last two months, last played on Dec. 8 when he scored 16 points, grabbed nine rebounds and blocked seven shots in a 69-59 victory over Pitt.
 
Various media reports are indicating that Konate's availability could be a game-time decision tonight.
 
If Konate does play, that would give WVU a rim protector its defense has been sorely missing this season.
 
We'll see when the ball goes up in the air at 7 p.m. tonight.