MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia is reaching the climactic portion of its regular season with back-to-back road games coming up at third-ranked Kansas on Saturday and at 23^rd-ranked Iowa State on Monday night.
 
This will be the fourth time this year the Mountaineers (16-12, 5-10) will be doubling up games within a span of two days. They did it back at the beginning of the New Year when they went on the road for games at Kansas State and at Oklahoma State.
 
They did it two weeks ago with Saturday-Monday games at Texas and at Baylor, and they did it last week with Saturday-Monday home games against Texas Tech and Oklahoma State.
 
The television exposure is great for the program, of course, but the tradeoff is less prep time for the following game. That's part of the deal if you want to play on Big Monday, which West Virginia will be doing at Iowa State for a third time this season.
 
It's also part of the deal as the Big 12's outlier school located in a different time zone.
 
It makes sense doubling up some of these long road trips, particularly the ones to Texas, to cut down on back-and-forth flights. Still, the extensive travel and short prep times only add to the difficulty of playing in the nation's No. 1 basketball conference.
 
"Getting in and out of hotels and on and off planes, it's hard on you and it's hard on the guys," West Virginia coach Bob Huggins admitted earlier today. "I think we've responded pretty well to it, but it takes a while to get back into it when you get back at 5 o'clock in the morning. It takes a while for you to feel yourself."
 
Since 2020, West Virginia has had at least three instances each year when it played back-to-back games with just one-day's rest. WVU won two of the three in 2020, won all three in 2021, lost all three last year and dropped the first two this season before winning last Monday night's game against Oklahoma State.
 
For the record, Baylor is also doing it four times this year.
 
The Bears have already doubled up games at Oklahoma and at home against Kansas two nights apart. They played at home against Arkansas and then on the road at Texas two nights later and went to TCU two nights before playing a home game against West Virginia earlier this month. This weekend, Baylor has a home date against Texas tomorrow afternoon before traveling to Oklahoma State to play on Monday night.
 
Some will argue this is no different than what teams face when they play in the NCAA Tournament, but that's not the case. The difference is teams remain at one site during the NCAA Tournament before advancing.
 
"After the first game, you go back to the hotel, you get dressed, you watch film, you get a bite to eat, you sleep, you wake up, you get a shoot-around at the place and then you play," Huggins explained. "The biggest thing is to get them some rest and then we'll look at film and do some things, but there's not a whole lot you can do."
 
Earlier this week, Oklahoma State got a little taste of what West Virginia regularly deals with when it played at TCU last Saturday, hopped on a charter in Fort Worth, Texas, and flew to a different time zone halfway across the country to play in Morgantown, West Virginia, two nights later.
 
The Cowboys made 2 of 19 from 3 and shot just 38.5% for the game in an 18-point loss to the Mountaineers. There's no question Oklahoma State's travel played a role in the outcome of Monday night's game, and travel is going to play an even bigger role in college basketball once conferences are finished expanding their footprints to all parts of the country.
 
Next year, the Big 12 will encompass three different time zones when BYU joins the league. That means West Virginia is no longer the outlier. It will be Provo, Utah, on one side and Orlando, Florida, where Central Florida is located, on the other.
 
And, keep in mind, not every campus in the Big 12 is located near a suitable airport for team travel.
 
"Let's be honest, for all of the B.S. you hear about us not having a convenient airport, there are not a whole lot of convenient airports in this league," Huggins pointed out. "There is not one in Kansas, and there is certainly not one in Ames. So, you are talking about another hour in one case and an hour and a half, an hour and 45 minutes, in another case - after you've landed!
 
"And, and it's not like flying into Clarksburg," he continued. "If I remember correctly, what people are talking about is we don't have an airport in Morgantown to fly planes into, so we have to fly somewhere else. They're thinking you have to fly into Pittsburgh. Well you don't. Clarksburg is every bit closer than the ones we're getting ready to fly into."
 
Therefore, coaching staffs must be extremely organized with their planning to maximize the limited amount of time they have with their guys on the court in between these short turnaround games.
 
"We haven't gone near as hard or near as long in practices," Huggins noted. "I don't know what else you do?"
 
In the meantime, West Virginia's full focus is on college basketball's third-ranked team, Kansas, which played like the No. 1 team in the country in the second half of last Saturday's impressive 87-71 victory over Baylor. 
 
That is probably the best half of basketball any team has played this season.
 
"They're really good," Huggins said of the 22-5 Jayhawks, tied with Texas atop the Big 12 standings with 10-4 records. "(Jalen) Wilson will probably be the MVP of the league. They shot the heck out of it when they came here, and they've shot it well all year.
 
"They're not as big and as imposing as they've been in the past, but they can really make shots," he added.
 
As for Iowa State, which comes just 48 hours later, the veteran coach said his guys will deal with the Cyclones once Saturday's game at Kansas is finished, sometime around 6:15 ET. 
 
Afterward, the Mountaineers will leave Lawrence around 7:30 p.m. ET for a 50-minute bus ride to Topeka to get on their charter for an hour plane ride over to Des Moines, Iowa. From Des Moines, they are looking at another hour in a bus to Ames, meaning the travel party will probably arrive at their hotel sometime around 11:30 p.m. ET, provided there are no delays.
 
That makes for a pretty long day.
 
Saturday's game will tip off at 4 p.m. and will be televised nationally on ESPN (Mark Neely and Chris Spatola).
 
Mountaineer Sports Network radio coverage with Tony Caridi and studio host David Kahn begins one hour earlier at 3 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 Sirius/XM channel 382.