MORGANTOWN - This is a different West Virginia basketball team that begins postseason play Wednesday afternoon in New York.

Different from those of recent years, that is, but perhaps no less dangerous.

And who would have envisioned that four months ago when Bob Huggins began working with a team he never would have recruited and in so many ways did not - and to a great extent still does not - fit his style.

Yet here the Mountaineers are, 22 wins richer than they began a season that easily could have produced barely half that many victories. Sure, you can say now that you expected this all along, that you had all the faith in the world that Huggins would somehow create a meat and potatoes meal out of vegetarian ingredients. But if you thought that, you were probably given to a great degree of blue-and-gold-shaded optimism.

Those not encumbered by such partisanship, though, had their doubts. Remember, for instance, where the Big East's 15 other coaches ranked West Virginia before a ball had been thrown in the air? If you don't, well, it was 10th in a 16-team league, just ahead of DePaul and actually two notches below Providence. The Mountaineers were ranked five spots under Syracuse, which was all but starting over with freshmen.

These are 15 guys who all know exactly what kind of a coach Huggins is and they still figured he was up against it.

Yet for the sixth straight year, West Virginia has exceeded expectations. That's right. You can, as they say, look it up.

John Beilein did it all five years he was here. Sometimes it wasn't by much, but WVU always finished ranked higher in the final standings than in the preseason poll. His first two teams wound up one spot higher, then two spots the next two years and five positions in his final season. Last year the Mountaineers were chosen 12th and finished tied for seventh.

Huggins' first team was also five spots better than the coaches expected, finishing tied for fifth. It can certainly be argued that this was the most impressive of the sixth straight seasons of exceeded expectations, given that Huggins was starting absolutely from scratch, introducing players he didn't know to a system they didn't know. Beilein's five-spot improvement last season, while remarkable given that it was the first post-Pittsnogle/Gansey/Herber, etc. group, came with a team that at least already had a system in place.

Like Beilein, though, don't expect Huggins to be called up to the podium at the Grand Hyatt in New York tonight when the league's coach of the year award is announced. I'm not quite sure who gets it. Notre Dame was picked ninth in the league and finished third, so Mike Brey is a candidate. But no one else in the league improved more than one or two spots above where they were predicted to finish. Marquette, Pitt, Syracuse, Villanova, Providence and DePaul all finished at least two spots lower than expectations.

In other words, Notre Dame and West Virginia were the only teams in the league that did significantly better than the coaches expected back in October.

The real test, of course, comes now. The regular season is nice for positioning and building a resume for the NCAA tournament, but the thing is to have improved enough to this point that you can win in the postseason. West Virginia returns to Madison Square Garden Wednesday for its second game there in five days, which certainly can't be anything but an advantage. The Mountaineers play Providence in the first round.

"The coaches are calling it Morgantown East because we seem to play there so often,'' said West Virginia forward Joe Alexander.

West Virginia has had pretty good success at the Big East tournament lately, at least compared to the way things used to be. OK, so a 4-3 mark in the last three years (three of the wins coming in 2005) isn't particularly glowing, but remember this was a school that in its first eight appearances in the event had won exactly once and had lost seven in a row before making a run to the title game in 2005.

As we said, though, this team is different. No longer is there the element of, let's say, freakishness with which WVU opponents must deal. Those Beilein teams thrived as much because they were hard to prepare for as for their level of talent and skill. That was particularly true in NCAA tournaments and the NIT. Remember, Beilein's four postseason teams were a combined 12-3 at that level.

But this team is much better now than it was even a month or two ago because Alexander - named Monday to the 11-man All-Big East first team - is suddenly one of the best players in the league and the Mountaineers have become even more comfortable playing Huggins' demanding style of defense.

Truth be told, though, probably no one is expecting much of West Virginia beyond Wednesday's first-round game with Providence.

But is there really anything unusual about that?

To contact staff writer Dave Hickman use e-mail or call 348-1734.