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MORGANTOWN -- Can North Carolina eliminate both West Virginia's men's and women's teams from the NCAA basketball tournaments?
That is the question hanging over the Mountaineers women's team after it was granted what seemed to be an inflated No. 6 seed in the tournament and sent it to, of all places, Chapel Hill, N.C., for the first and second rounds of the Birmingham Regional in the tournament.
The selection came just an hour or so after the men's field was drawn with WVU being snubbed by the NCAA Tournament committee, which announced that the Mountaineers were the first team out, sitting at No. 69 in a 68-team field.
The team that got the last spot?
The North Carolina men, with a resume that showed a 1-12 record against Quad 1 teams while WVU had 6 Quad 1 victories on its resume, including wins in games over teams who at the time were ranked No. 2 (Iowa State), No. 3 (Gonzaga) and No. 7 (Kansas, on its fabled home court at Allen Fieldhouse).
Oh, yes, the chair of the selection committee was Bubba Cunningham, who just happens to be the athletic director at North Carolina and who reportedly receives a bonus of just under $68,000 for making the field, according to the New York Post.
And, of course, he could make another $225,000 in bonus money if the Tar Heels can make a run and win the national title.
He argues that he reclused himself during discussions of North Carolina and was not in the room, but he wasn't reclused from discussions of WVU and, what's more, does anyone believe that if it was the chairman's wish that Carolina be in the field his wishes would be ignored?
A year ago, the Mountaineers were in a similar situation, being a No. 8 seed having to face the nation's best player, Caitlin Clark of Iowa in the second round on Clark's home court, losing after a long, hard battle in a game that might have gone their way had they played on a neutral court, as the men would have done.
If WVU can win its first game over the winner of the Columbia/Washington play-in game on Saturday at 2 p.m., and North Carolina can beat Oregon State, the two will play on Monday and you can bet that Coach Mark Kellogg and his star JJ Quinerly will be looking for a measure of satisfaction by taking care of business in that one.
The tournament is sort of a going away tour for Quinerly, who put herself among the all-time leading scorers and steal leaders at WVU while playing for three different coaches over four years, a rare sign of loyalty in such a transitory era.
"To me, the NCAA tournament is your last time, basically," Quinerly said. "With me, being a senior, it's really my last time. I think we just have to go out there and leave it all on the floor and enjoy the moment."
Just as a year ago WVU felt it's seeding was too low and put it in an awkward position of having to play the host team on its home court, there are questions about the 24-7 Mountaineers being seeded No. 6.
The NCAA's own NET rankings had the Mountaineers at No. 12 in the country but the No. 6 seed did not reflect that.
"We've seen in years past they don't just go off the NET, so it's not overly surprising, I guess," Kellogg said, not wanting to make a big deal about it, especially in the midst of the fire that was burning over the men's situation "But I don't understand that formula and how it works."
If anyone finds out how it works, maybe they ought to explain it to the NCAA.
"I feel like we could have been a little better, but we're in it, so you can't complain," Quinerly said.
WVU will come into the tournament with fresh legs to run its pressure defense that often is difficult on teams seeing it for the first time, as is the case in the NCAA Tournament.
Last year the Mountaineers held Iowa to its lowest point total of the season, just 64 points, of which Clark had half of them.
They scored 38 of those points in the second half and were held to only 6 points in the second quarter as WVU went to the locker room down just two points.
The Mountaineers do have to prepare themselves for two opponents before the weekend, but have time to do so while those two teams have to concentrate on getting ready for each other and leave themselves with just a day to work against WVU's pressure defense.
"We may just have a couple of days to prepare for one of the teams," Kellogg said. "And then we can have a couple of days to prepare for the other team, where they will be preparing for us on a one-day prep. So it still should be an advantage for us from a prep standpoint.
"They'll just have now played a game on the floor. Now, you have that just like in a conference tournament where you get the double bye and you are waiting on people that have already played."
WVU feels ready and eager to get into it.
"I think what we did a year ago in the tournament, I think a lot of people have still talked about that," Kellogg said. "We want to build off it. We have played in that big-time environment. I have told them all year that there should be no environment that intimidates us if you were on the team that played at Iowa a year ago. I think there's a sense of comfort."