KANSAS CITY – West Virginia University's regular season comes down to an early Saturday evening matchup against UCF at a sold-out WVU Coliseum.
 
The Knights, under ninth-year coach Johnny Dawkins, have been up and down this season, as evidenced by their 16-14 overall record.
 
The really good UCF team shows wins over Texas A&M, Texas Tech, TCU and Kansas State, while the not-so good Knights lost seven in a row at one point, two of those coming at Colorado and Oklahoma State.
 
UCF is 13-5 at home but just 2-7 on the road this year with their wins away from Orlando coming at Texas Tech and Arizona State.
 
The Knights rank fifth in the Big 12, averaging 79 points per game, and are dead last in the conference in scoring defense, giving up 80.1 points per game. That's almost 17 points per game more than West Virginia is allowing.
 
Therefore, Saturday's game is likely going to come down to a battle of wills: which team can impose its will on the other?
 
"They are a talented team offensively when you watch the tape. They can really score, and they've done that on a lot of people," West Virginia coach Darian DeVries said.
 
Junior forward Keyshawn Hall has overtaken WVU's Javon Small as the Big 12's scoring leader with an average of 18.9 points per game. Hall, a 6-foot-7, 235-pound forward, began his college career at George Mason and had a stop at UNLV before his current stint at UCF.
 
The Cleveland, Ohio, resident has gotten to the free throw line 216 times this year and can also shoot the 3, connecting on 35.4% of his 113 attempts. 
 
"He's terrific," DeVries said. "He shoots 3s at a high clip. He gets to the free throw line. He gets to the rim, and he can do it all by himself. That's what makes him so challenging; plus, he's got great size. It's a difficult matchup for all teams. He's super aggressive. He leads the league in scoring, and everyone is trying to stop him, and it's so hard to do."
 
UCF also has an outstanding complementary scorer in 6-foot-1 senior guard Darius Johnson, from nearby Boyds, Maryland. Johnson is averaging 16.1 points per game and is shooting an impressive 41.2% from 3-point distance.
 
Both players can go for 20 on any given night.
 
UCF has two other double-digit scorers in Jordan Ivy-Curry (12.9 ppg.) and Moustapha Thiam (10.2 ppg.).
 
Hall is grabbing a team-best 7.1 rebounds per game, while Thiam, a 7-foot-2, 235-pound freshman center from Dakar, Senegal, is grabbing six boards per game.
 
From top to bottom, UCF has a talented roster of players.
 
"You try and make it as difficult as possible and make their possessions as challenging as you can," DeVries said of trying to slow down the Knights. "They are going to score because that's what they are really good at, so you just have to try and minimize that as much as you can."
 
UCF is coming off an 83-70 home victory over Oklahoma State and has won three of its last four with a road loss at TCU sandwiched between wins over Utah and Kansas State.
 
West Virginia, meanwhile, picked up a huge Quad 1 victory at Utah earlier this week and now shows 18 wins on the season, six of those coming against Quad 1 opponents in the NCAA NET Rankings.
 
The Mountaineers currently have a NET of 49 while UCF is 78.
 
"It's really unusual that it is the last game of the season, and it's a team that you haven't seen all year," DeVries pointed out. "We've got a little bit of a short prep on an odd week where we had to take a day off after our (Utah) trip, so we just get a one-day prep for the game."
 
West Virginia is in a three-team logjam for eighth place in the Big 12 standings and as many as five teams can finish the year with 10-10 conference records, WVU being one of them.
 
Different pathways still exist for the Mountaineers to finish in the top eight in the Big 12 standings and earn a first-round bye in next week's Big 12 Tournament in Kansas City.
 
Games for West Virginia fans to keep an eye on Saturday include Iowa State at Kansas State, TCU at Colorado, Arizona at Kansas and Houston at Baylor.
 
No tickets remain for Saturday's UCF contest, which will air on ESPN+ and tip off at 5 p.m. ET.
 
Mountaineer Sports Network radio coverage with Tony Caridi, Brad Howe and studio host David Kahn will tip things off at 4 p.m. on stations throughout West Virginia, online via WVUsports.com and the Varsity Network and WVU Gameday apps.
 
WVU seniors Eduardo Andre, Jake Auer, Javon Small, Toby Okani and Joseph Yesufu will be recognized before the game.