MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia, continuing Big 12 play at the WVU Coliseum on Tuesday night against BYU, is looking to reverse a troubling midweek trend.
 
The Mountaineers have dropped their last two Tuesday night conference home games to Arizona State and Arizona and have struggled during midweek league games at the Coliseum dating back to 2021.
 
Since then, WVU is just 3-5 in conference Tuesday night home games and is also struggling on Wednesdays, going 2-5 with its wins coming against Cincinnati in 2024 and against TCU in 2023.
 
That's a 5-10 record in West Virginia's last 15 Big 12 midweek home dates over the last five seasons.
 
Weekends have typically drawn much larger crowds, which helps the Coliseum atmosphere immensely, but somehow the Mountaineers are going to have to recreate similar excitement, enthusiasm and energy during their work-week home games.
 
And looming is a dangerous BYU team coming off a disappointing, 84-66 loss at Cincinnati on Saturday.
 
"We have a huge home game, and home games are so golden in this league," West Virginia coach Darian DeVries said following his team's hard-fought, 72-61 victory over Utah last Saturday. "You have got to come every single night and be ready to play. We've got BYU, and hopefully, we will play before another big and impactful crowd like it was tonight."
 
The box score listed 10,528 for West Virginia's Tuesday night loss to Arizona State back on Jan. 21, a game which tipped off at 9 p.m. The Mountaineers dug themselves an early 10-2 hole against the Sun Devils and never really got things going.
 
It was a similar deal against the Arizona Wildcats on Tuesday, Jan. 7, when West Virginia fell behind by double digits in the first half and never got back in it.
 
The attendance listed for the Arizona game was 10,566, which is a couple thousand less than what WVU usually draws for its weekend home games.
 
BYU and West Virginia are currently lumped with seven other teams in the Big 12 standings heading into this week's action. West Virginia, BYU and Kansas State are in the middle with .500 records, one loss below 7-5 Baylor and Kansas, and one game ahead of 5-7 Utah and TCU.
 
Therefore, the outcome of Tuesday night's game is critical for both teams looking to remain on the right side of the NCAA Tournament bubble.
 
Both were in ESPN.com's last bracketology updated on Friday morning. West Virginia, seeded ninth, helped itself with its win over Utah while BYU, seeded 11^th, harmed its chances in Cincinnati.

The Cougars were leading 42-39 at halftime before suffering a second half collapse that saw the Bearcats outscore them 23-2 during an eight-minute stretch. Cincinnati shot a sizzling 58.6% for the game and got 24 points on nine-of-14 shooting from guard Jizzle James, including six-of-eight from 3-point range.
 
BYU guards Richie Saunders (15) and Egor Demin (12) were the only Cougars to score in double figures.
 
After connecting on 59.3% of its first half field goal tries, BYU made just eight of 24 in the second half and got outrebounded 32 to 17 for the game. Cincinnati had a 16-to-0 advantage in second-chance points and tallied 24 points off 12 Cougar turnovers. 
 
Normally, rebounding has been an area of strength for BYU, coached this year by Kevin Young, who spent last season as the Phoenix Suns' associate head coach.
 
BYU is outrebounding its opponents by an average of 6.4 boards per game, while averaging more than 11 offensive rebounds per contest. The Cougars are shooting an impressive 48.1% as a team, led by Saunders, a 6-foot-5 junior guard making 50.6% of his shot attempts and averaging a team-best 15.1 points per game.
 
The Riverton, Utah, resident is shooting 44% from 3-point range, connecting on 51 of his 116 attempts from behind the arc. 
 
Trevin Knell, another 6-foot-5 guard, has been equally effective from 3-point distance by making 43.4% of his 113 attempts.
 
Demin, a 6-foot-9 freshman guard from Moscow, Russia, is the other Cougar averaging double figures at 11.1 points per contest. He has handed out an impressive 111 assists, which means he is personally accounting for 19.2 points per game.
 
Forward Keba Keita, a former Utah transfer, is pulling down 7.7 rebounds per outing and leads the team with 61 offensive boards. The 6-foot-8 junior has blocked a team-best 18 shots.

The Cougars are averaging an impressive 80 points per game.
 
BYU (15-8) has dropped its last two games against Arizona and Cincinnati after winning four in a row against Colorado, Cincinnati, Baylor and UCF.
 
The Cougars are 2-4 in conference road games with their victories coming at Colorado and UCF.
 
West Virginia (15-8) has the advantage of being at home but is in the middle of a difficult stretch that has seen it play six games in 14 days since Jan. 29.
 
Idle days have been sparse, which means you must take advantage of them.
 
"You get some sleep, and you get some treatment and get some rest," DeVries explained. "This time of year, it's February and a lot of people are tired. It's that mental fight of continuing to maximize everything you've got left, and taking care of your body is No. 1."
 
Taking care of business at home against BYU is also paramount for the Mountaineers on Tuesday night.
 
BYU, like the rest of the teams in the Big 12, is going to try and take away leading scorer Javon Small, who took just five shots against Utah but finished with 14 points to go with eight assists.
 
To Small's credit, he didn't force things and was a willing passer last Saturday.
 
"If it's about making the right play, he's going to do it," DeVries said.
 
"Javon is our leading scorer, but we need more than Javon to win games, and you need other things to win games," he added. "So, the buy-in to do those tough things and those little things that maybe don't get noticed every night … when you can do that and have an impact on winning without even scoring a basket, that's when your team and your culture is good."
 
Judging from Young's comments after the Cincinnati loss, Small is at the top of BYU's scouting report for Tuesday night's game.
 
"We have a good opportunity at hand to go stay on the road against West Virginia, who's got a dynamic guard who's going to be a handful for us," he said. "We've got to find a way to slow him down."
 
A 7 p.m. tipoff has been established for the contest. 
 
CBS Sports Network will televise the game nationally, while the Mountaineer Sports Network with Tony Caridi, Brad Howe and studio host David Kahn will provide the radio coverage starting at 6 p.m. on stations throughout West Virginia, online via WVUsports.com and the Varsity Network and WVU Gameday apps.
 
Tickets remain on sale and can be purchased online through the Mountaineer Ticket Office by logging on to WVUGAME.com.