MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – There are stages in the development of any good basketball team, and this year's West Virginia University squad is about to enter a different stage to its season.
 
WVU's impressive 16-3 record and a national ranking that is approaching the Top 10 puts forth a new set of challenges for Bob Huggins' young squad.
 
Are they good enough and mature enough to handle them?
 
We are going to find out Wednesday night in Lubbock, Texas, against a 12-7 Texas Tech team that is backed into a corner.
 
Last year, these guys stunned the Red Raiders in the Big 12 Tournament, but they weren't able to parlay that upset victory into a deep run in the College Basketball Invitational Tournament. Coastal Carolina took care of that at the WVU Coliseum.
 
Earlier this year, when West Virginia was seeking national respect after the way it performed in Mexico against Northern Iowa and Wichita State, a trip to New York City brought it back to reality.
 
It was the same deal a couple of weeks ago at that other Manhattan when the Mountaineers got bullied by a sub-.500 basketball team.
 
"We are in the same situation, basically, we were in at Kansas State," Huggins said Tuesday morning. "We're playing a desperate team – a desperate team with a sellout crowd and we're a young group. We haven't been through that a lot."
 
"I think that's the hardest part."
 
Years ago, when Huggins was just getting it going at Cincinnati, his Bearcats once faced blue blood Indiana early during UC's Final Four season.
 
The arena was packed and everybody in there thought for sure they were going to provide an atmosphere that was going to be intimidating enough to make the Hoosiers fold – sort of the same way the WVU students feel here whenever the Coliseum is packed and it's so loud that your fillings hurt.
 
It was usually that way whenever Jim Calhoun brought his Connecticut teams here, or when Jim Boeheim's Syracuse teams or John Thompson's Georgetown Hoyas came to town.
 
But guess what?  

The Connecticuts, the Syracuses and the Georgetowns dealt with those types of environments on a nightly basis. They knew the drill – take the home team's best shot, recover, settle in and then wear them down and steal it at the end.
 
That's why the UMass game back in 1995 wasn't over with four minutes to go and the Mountaineers leading by 18 points. That's why a double-digit second half lead to Kentucky just a few years ago evaporated so quickly.
 
Kentucky is usually going to Kentucky, just as it did a couple of nights ago when it absorbed haymaker after haymaker from Texas Tech and eventually willed itself to an overtime victory.
 
Huggins learned this valuable lesson years ago when he watched his Bearcat team blow a halftime lead to Indiana and then get rolled. Afterward, Bob Knight shared some coaching wisdom with Huggins that he didn't really appreciate hearing at the time but has since kept stored away in the memory vault.
 
"When I went down to shake coach Knight's hand he said, 'This wasn't fair to your kids.' I'm like, 'What? I don't understand?' He said, 'We're used to this - we're used to playing in front of sellout crowds. We're used to being everybody's big game. Your guys weren't used to having a game this big and it's not their fault. They'll grow into it.'"
 
Huggins continued.
 
"I'm like thinking, 'What an asinine thing to say to a guy after he just got beat.' But you know what, he was a 100 percent right and as we got better and as we grew up as a team and as a program, we took everybody's best shot. No matter where we went, we were everybody's circled game of the year.
 
"That where we've got to get to and we've got to get to the fact that, 'Hey, this is it and we have to rise to the occasion.'"
 
It was apparent - even during the first five minutes of the Kansas State game 11 days ago - that West Virginia wasn't ready for what the Wildcats were about to dish out that afternoon. It wasn't until K-State's lead swelled to more than 20 points did the players realize, 'Hey, these guys mean business. We're getting swiss cheese and salami stuffed into our ears!'"
 
Therefore, Huggins is interested to see how his guys are going to react Wednesday night when Texas Tech attempts to put some more cheese into their ears.
 
Are they ready to fight back? Can they weather the storm, settle in, wear the other guys down and steal one at the end the way the really good teams win tough games on the road?
 
Are they going to play hard from the get-go like the team that beat Texas by 38 points last Monday night at the Coliseum or the one that limited Missouri to just 51 points in a 23-point win last Saturday afternoon?
 
Or will the squad that showed up in both Manhattans reappear down in Lubbock?
 
This is the time of the season when the contenders separate themselves from the pretenders.
 


"We've got to keep getting better," Huggins explained. "We can't think we've arrived because we haven't arrived. When we can start to go to Lubbock and win, when we can go to Kansas and win despite all of the odds, then all of a sudden we've arrived. 
 
"Until then we're walking uphill, man."
 
Make no mistake about it, this team has great aspirations. It wants to do things few other teams have ever done here, but putting them up on a wall and saying them is one thing - going out and doing it is something else entirely.
 
"If we're going to be what they aspire to be then, we need to go to Lubbock and win. If you go in the film room and you see all of their goals they have written that they want to accomplish, then we need to go to Lubbock and win," Huggins said.
 
"We have got to learn - and they've got to learn - that we're getting to a point again where we're going to take everybody's best shot," he added. "We're going to be a team that when we go to wherever we go, whether it's Lubbock or its whomever in our league, we're going to take their best shot because we're a ranked team. We've been a ranked team, there is now talk of a No. 2 seed (in the NCAA Tournament) and we're resume builders for other people. We've got to learn to handle that."
 
And there is only so much an experienced coach such as Huggins who continues to climb past some of the game's immortal coaches can do.
 
He can't walk out there and set a screen and knock somebody down, or tell his guys where to pass it while the play is unfolding. He can't get out in the passing lanes and make it tough to pass the basketball, or run Texas Tech's great 3-point shooters off the line.
 
That has to come from the five guys out on the floor wearing the West Virginia uniforms.
 
"That's the point of what coach Knight was trying to say to me. It's like you have to be comfortable in your own skin. I don't know yet if we're comfortable in our own skin," he concluded.
 
We're going to find out Wednesday night.
 
Tipoff is 8 p.m. ET and the game will be live streamed through Big 12 Now on ESPN +.
 
Mountaineer Sports Network from Learfield IMG College radio coverage will begin at 7 p.m. on affiliates throughout West Virginia and online via WVUsports.com and the popular mobile app WVU Gameday.
 
Earlier this year, West Virginia defeated Texas Tech 66-54 in Morgantown.