by Jack Bogaczyk, Sports Editor , Charleston Daily Mail

Picked to finish in the bottom half of the league in six of the seven seasons with John Beilein or Bob Huggins on the sidelines, the 2009-10 Mountaineers are going to play through rarefied air usually occupied by the Connecticuts, Louisvilles and Pitts.

For a third season of HuggyBall, West Virginia is projected among the league's elite. With only shooting guard Alex Ruoff exiting and star forwards Devin Ebanks and Da'Sean Butler returning, the Mountaineers will have a schedule reflective of the lofty opinion of Huggins' peers.

To make the Big East schedule - with each of the 16 teams playing 12 opponents once and three foes home-and-home - the conference uses a weighted system determined by June polling of the coaches, a few Big East basketball staffers and taking note of informal media polls.

"We group (the teams) by tiers, and sometimes the tiers are somewhat similar," said Big East Associate Commissioner Tom Odjakjian, who coordinates television and basketball scheduling for the conference. "We put all of the input from the coaches, some of the staff and some of the media all into the stew."

Then, the information on who's supposed to be where in the standings is fed into a computer. One day last week, Big East staffers ran 50 different models. Factors are included on who played whom where the previous season and sequential history on opponents' sites.

The Big East's telecast network partners, ESPN and CBS, also have a say on which teams they might want to play home-and-home for marquee matchups.

ESPN's contract with the conference, for instance, states that if CBS selects a Louisville-WVU game, for instance, ESPN has the right to take the same matchup in two instances.

So, this is where it will get interesting for Huggins and Co. Because it is ranked behind only Villanova in most informal polls out there, WVU likely will face two tough home-and-homes and one "bottom-half" matchup.

The Big East annually waits until the NBA early-entry declaration deadline has passed, and once June 8 arrived - it moves up to May 8 next year - and Notre Dame's Luke Harangody and Villanova's Scottie Reynolds said they were returning to school, the coaches were asked for rankings from 1-16.

Odjakjian said the conference hopes to have the six home, six road and three home-and-home matchups determined and announced by July 4. The Big East administrator wouldn't say how many tiers the conference is using for 2009-10, but he said the number is usually four and sometimes five.

You can bet WVU is in the top tier.

The Mountaineers could be a preseason top 10-12 team nationally. Huggins' name, accomplishments and history push buttons. Ebanks and Butler both are projected as top 40 picks in the 2010 NBA Draft.

The last time that happened at WVU? Never. The closest was in 1963, when Rod Thorn and Jim McCormick were picked third and 49th, respectively.

Nobody asked, but here's one press row sitter's Big East summer poll:

1. Villanova, 2. WVU, 3. UConn, 4. Notre Dame, 5. Louisville, 6. Syracuse, 7. Cincinnati, 8. Pitt, 9. Georgetown, 10. Seton Hall, 11. Marquette, 12. St. John's, 13. Rutgers, 14. Providence, 15. South Florida, 16. DePaul.

In eight of the last nine seasons, WVU has played rival Pitt home-and-home. Odjakjian said that isn't a certainty again, but "there are always things we like to do, and those things are likely to happen, as long as it doesn't create an unfairness (in trying to balance the league schedule)."

The conference also works to try and avoid difficult Saturday-Monday turnarounds. However, in a basketball league with the kind of quality depth the Big East had last winter, a killer weekend isn't out of the question.

Once the opponents and their sites and frequency are determined, the coaches can't lobby for changes.

"The coaches' only input is the poll (just taken)," Odjakjian said.

The only time in the past seven years WVU was picked in the top half of the league, the Mountaineers were fifth in the media poll in 2005-06 under Beilein.

Big East teams played only 16 conference games then. Each team played three home-and-homes (Cincinnati, Pitt and Georgetown for WVU) and skipped two foes (Rutgers and DePaul didn't face the Mountaineers).

Last season's conference schedule had the best balance of those that the Big East computer and staff have come up with since expansion that made league hoops even tougher. Marquee teams weren't overloaded with three fellow contenders in home-and-home dates.

Huggins doesn't worry about playing a rugged schedule. His non-conference card perennially tells that. A top-tier Big East schedule is what WVU should want. It makes a statement about the program's progress in college basketball's deepest league.

Contact Sports Editor Jack Bogaczyk at jackb@dailymail.com or 304-348-7949.

Copyright 2009 Charleston Newspapers
	Terms & Conditions     Privacy Copyright © 2009 LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.