It's time for an official Preview & Prediction for Kansas State's trip to Morgantown to face the West Virginia Mountaineers.

Saturday, February 1, 2020 >> 1:05 p.m., CT >> WVU Coliseum (14,000) >> Morgantown, W.Va.

TELEVISION

ESPN2 / WatchESPN

Mark Neely (play-by-play)Tim Welsh (analyst)David Ashbrock (producer)

RADIO

K-State Sports Network

Flagships: // KMAN 1350 & WIBW 580

Online: TuneIn.com [free] / www.kstatesports.com/watch [free]

Satellite Radio: XM 388 / Internet 978

Wyatt Thompson (play-by-play)Stan Weber (analyst)

PROJECTED STARTING LINEUP

Kansas State (9-11)

G: #4 David Sloan

G: #3 DaJuan Gordon

G/F: #20 Xavier Sneed

F: #23 Montavious Murphy

F: #14 Makol Mawien

West Virginia (16-4)

G: #5 Jordan McCabe

G: #10 Jermaine Haley

F: #11 Emmitt Matthews, Jr.

F: #1 Derek Culver

F: #34 Oscar Tshiebwe

OPENING TIP

Kansas State (9-11, 2-5 Big 12) opens the month of February on the road for the third time in four games, as the Wildcats travel to Morgantown, W.Va., to face former head coach Bob Huggins and his nationally-ranked West Virginia Mountaineers (16-4, 4-3 Big 12) on Saturday afternoon before an expected sold-out WVU Coliseum.

For the second consecutive game, the Wildcats will face a repeat Big 12 opponent as they seek to sweep the season series from the Mountaineers for the second straight season after earning an 84-68 win at home on Jan. 18. The game will tip at 1:05 p.m., CT on ESPN2 with Mark Neely (play-by-play) and Tim Welsh (analyst) on the call.

-Provided by K-State Athletics Communications

Since the Big 12 season over one-thirds complete, the stats and rankings will be from league only games.

Since losing in Manhattan two weeks ago the Mountaineers destroyed both Texas and Missouri lost on the road to Texas Tech. Tech scored five more points than the Wildcats, but K-State was slightly more efficient scoring at 1.20 points per possession compared to Tech's 1.19.

K-State isn't likely to match that, and West Virginia has been dominant at home with a 10-0 record The closest game was 69-61 vs. Northern Colorado in mid-November.

Huggins continues to play 10-to-11 guys on a regular basis, and here are the individual stats in Big 12 games only.

McBride comes off the bench as WVU's leader in scoring and efficiency, plus bigs Culver and Tshiebwe score in double figures and have efficiencies of 1.05 and 1.10 respectively.

After that, there isn't a consistent scorer, but the Mountaineers rely on 4-to-6 points from a bunch of guys. No one, besides McBride, is over 30% from three, and there is no true volume 3-point shooter in league play with five or more 3-point attempts per game.

1. Play the 3 point lottery: It will be tough for K-State to go into Morgantown and come out with a win, and if K-State gets destroyed on twos and in the paint it will be a long afternoon. The Cats need to force the ball out and see if guys like McCabe, Harler, Sherman, and McNeil can beat them from behind the arc.

2. Stay within 4-5% on the boards: WVU is the best offensive rebounding team in the league, while K-State is seventh at keeping opponents off the boards. K-State is only eighth grabbing its own misses, while WVU is fifth keeping opponents off the board. The Cats need to keep WVU from rebounding more than 35% of its misses and get about 30% themselves; that will be a good number for K-State.

3. Avoid the turnover spells: One key in beating Oklahoma was taking care of the ball better than any game this season, except the opener vs North Dakota State. The Cats need to keep the number under 20%, for sure, and probably under 15% while forcing a 20% rate themselves.

If K-State were to win this game in Morgantown and sweep the Mountaineers, it would 100 percent alter my perception of where the Wildcats season is headed.

A big part of that is due to the unlikelihood of such an achievement, as WVU has been dominant at home this season.

As FAN noted above, the Mountaineers are 10-0 in Morgantown and have beaten Texas and Missouri at in their gym by an AVERAGE of 30.5 points a game over the last 10 days.

There's going to be a stretch in this game where WVU outscores K-State in a 16-2 type spurt; it happens to every team the Mountaineers play at least once a contest. The Wildcats will need to have been ahead going into that sequence to have a chance to hang around.

If they were behind to begin with, however, it will be a challenge to keep it from looking like the final score at Kansas.

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