MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Baylor is two years removed from a national championship, one week removed from being in the top 25 and has a roster loaded with talented basketball players.
 
West Virginia's computer numbers continue to dazzle. The Mountaineers enter this week ranked 19^th in the NET, 23^rd in Kenpom's efficiency rankings, 24^th in the BPI and 25^th in the RPI.
 
Yet tomorrow night at about 9 o'clock, one of these two teams is going to be sitting in a very deep hole at 0-4 in Big 12 play.
 
That's the neighborhood these two are hanging out in these days.
 
The Bears (10-5, 0-3) were cruising along with notable nonconference wins over UCLA, Gonzaga and Washington State before facing Iowa State in Ames.
 
The Cyclones won that game by 15 and the next two at home against TCU and Kansas State came down to the final possession of the game. The Horned Frogs held on for an 88-87 victory and Kansas State pulled out a 97-95 win in overtime.
 
That means Baylor will be playing its first basketball game as an unranked team in nearly four years, or roughly 1,161 days. That also means the Bears could be looking at their first 0-4 start in conference play since 2005-06 – coach Scott Drew's third season at the helm.
 
Most of the guys on the floor on Wednesday night were still drinking out of sippy cups back then.
 
West Virginia and its Hall of Fame coach Bob Huggins have charted a similar path in getting to 10-5, 0-3. Outside of league play, the Mountaineers own blowout victories over Pitt and Florida and hung in there with third-ranked Purdue and 12^th-ranked Xavier before running out of gas.
 
They scored a season-high 96 points in an 18-point home win over Buffalo and were averaging nearly 82 points per game just three weeks ago.
 
Now, Huggins is looking for somebody to step up and string a couple of made baskets together. His team shot 41.3% in its 82-76 overtime loss at Kansas State on Dec. 31. It shot 36.5% in its seven-point road loss at Oklahoma State and 35.1% in last Saturday's 14-point home defeat to No. 2 Kansas.
 
Senior forward Jimmy Bell Jr. says it's a matter of the team regaining its confidence. Huggins says it simply boils down to having a will to win.
 
"One of my guys came in today and said, 'Hey, we're going to be all right. The sun's going to come up.' 'Well, why don't you go watch the sun then!' I wasn't born to lose, and I've done my darndest not to lose," he said. 
 
"I've had teams that couldn't make shots; I had teams at Cincinnati that couldn't make a shot for all of the tea in China," Huggins continued. "But I'll tell you what they did, now, they guarded. If the other team doesn't score, then it's okay if you don't score, particularly in light of the fact that we got every rebound. To this point, we're not doing that.
 
"Everywhere I've ever been you put that sign up that says, 'Find a Way.' You're not always going to make shots and you're not always going to make free throws and a lot of things are not always going to go right, but you ought to always aspire to find a way to win."
 
That's probably what it's going to come down to on Wednesday night – which team is willing to dig deep within itself to find a way to win a basketball game.
 
Adding some spice to the endeavor will be the return of Fairmont native and former Mountaineer Jalen Bridges, who jumped into the transfer portal after last season and ended up in Waco, Texas. He's started all 15 games at forward for the Bears and is averaging 8.9 points and 4.8 rebounds per game, which is about the same number of points and rebounds he averaged in 33 games last year for the Mountaineers.
 
Bridges is believed to be the first former Mountaineer player to return to the WVU Coliseum with another team since D'Angelo Hunter did it with Nicholls State on Dec. 14, 2019. Hunter didn't seem to be too distracted by the student section after scoring 14 points in 34 minutes of action. Of course, his team did lose by 26.
 
Nevertheless, Huggins doesn't see Bridges' return being a major deal unless the media or social media turns it into one.
 
The much bigger issue for him is figuring out a way to slow down guards Keyonte George (16.8 ppg.), Adam Flagler (16.7 ppg.) and LJ Cryer (13.8 ppg.). Those three account for more than half of Baylor's scoring.
 
"They have, for as long as I can remember, relied on their guards," he explained. "Their guards are good, and they take the vast majority of their shots. Maybe (assistant coaches Ron Everhart and Larry Harrison) have looked at it differently, but I'm trying to figure out how we slow those guards down."
 
Huggins is also not sure if he's going to have his best on-the-ball defender to meet the objective. He said Tuesday that senior Kedrian Johnson is still listed as "day-ot-day" after suffering a concussion and missing last Saturday's Kansas contest. Johnson was able to practice on a limited basis yesterday.
 
"We'll see what he's able to do today," Huggins said.
 
With Johnson out against Kansas, West Virginia used a starting lineup consisting of Joe Toussaint and Erik Stevenson at the guard spots, with Bell, Emmitt Matthews Jr. and Tre Mitchell at the forward positions.
 
Mitchell tallied a team-best 15 points against the Jayhawks and is leading the team with a 15.7-points-per-game average in Big 12 play.
 
The guy Huggins hopes can regain his shooting stroke is Stevenson, who is coming off a rough 4-for-19 shooting performance in the Kansas loss.
 
Stevenson, Toussaint and Mitchell combined to miss 30 of their 41 shot attempts against the Jayhawks.
 
"You look at our shooting percentage and it's taken a drastic step down," Huggins said. 
 
Perhaps that can change on Wednesday night. In its three conference games so far this year, Baylor is giving up 87.3 points per game and allowing its opponents to shoot 50.5% from the floor.
 
A 7 p.m. tip time has been assigned for the contest, which will be televised on Big 12 Now on ESPN+ (James Westling and King McClure). Mountaineer Sports Network radio coverage with Tony Caridi, Jay Jacobs and studio host David Kahn tips things off at 6 p.m. on stations throughout West Virginia and online via WVUsports.com and the mobile apps WVU Gameday and The Varsity Network.
 
Satellite radio coverage is on SiriusXM channel 375.
 
Tickets are still available and can be purchased through the Mountaineer Ticket Office by logging on to WVUGAME.com.