MORGANTOWN - It's easy to look at West Virginia's home game with Connecticut tonight and think that by some quirk of scheduling fate the Mountaineers are being tested early by having to face the No. 5 team in the country.

The reality, though, is that the date doesn't matter. Early in the season? Late? A tough stretch in the middle?

Get used to it.

"It's not really just Connecticut this soon. That's the league. It could be anybody,'' WVU guard Alex Ruoff said. "It could be Villanova, it could be Notre Dame, it could be Louisville or Pitt or Georgetown or Marquette or Syracuse or any of those guys. It just happens we have Connecticut first.''

Indeed, by the end of the regular season West Virginia and every other team in the Big East could be numb to challenges of this sort. When the two major polls were released Monday, a staggering nine league teams - including West Virginia for the first time this season - were ranked among the Top 25. (See story, below.)

So here it is - for West Virginia, the first of a stretch of huge games between ranked teams. In this case it is a 7 p.m. contest between the No. 25 Mountaineers (11-2, 1-0 Big East) and the fifth-ranked Huskies (12-1, 1-1). The game will be televised by ESPNU.

"Look at some of the other teams. Rutgers had Pitt and Connecticut their first two games,'' Ruoff said, not even mentioning that the Scarlet Knights also had North Carolina in a streak in which they incredibly faced teams ranked Nos. 1, 2 and 3 at the time back-to-back-to-back. "Georgetown had Connecticut and Pitt. I mean, wow. This whole season is going to be like this. But I'm ready to get started.''

The question, of course, is whether the rest of the Mountaineers are similarly prepared. Down to one healthy point guard and playing three freshmen and two sophomores in an eight-man rotation, this is a team that still has some growing to do. And Ruoff was fairly blunt in trying to assess where West Virginia is right now.

"This team's success is going to be like a meter that shows how fast our young guys develop, the guys who haven't played a lot,'' Ruoff said. "The quicker they get it, the quicker they buy in and realize what the Big East is about, the better we're going to be. But you can only tell them so much. They have to experience it.''

So far, freshmen Devin Ebanks, Kevin Jones and that only healthy point guard, Darryl "Truck" Bryant, have progressed as quickly as anyone might have hoped. Sophomore John Flowers has made vast improvements from a year ago and sophomore Cam Thoroughman has been solid in what he's been asked to do, which is fill in during foul trouble and play aggressively.

But the Mountaineers haven't faced a team like Connecticut so far, either. They've played ranked teams, the best of which was probably Ohio State, and beat the Buckeyes on the road by 28 points. But that was also a young Ohio State team.

MORGANTOWN - It's easy to look at West Virginia's home game with Connecticut tonight and think that by some quirk of scheduling fate the Mountaineers are being tested early by having to face the No. 5 team in the country.

The reality, though, is that the date doesn't matter. Early in the season? Late? A tough stretch in the middle?

Get used to it.

"It's not really just Connecticut this soon. That's the league. It could be anybody,'' WVU guard Alex Ruoff said. "It could be Villanova, it could be Notre Dame, it could be Louisville or Pitt or Georgetown or Marquette or Syracuse or any of those guys. It just happens we have Connecticut first.''

Indeed, by the end of the regular season West Virginia and every other team in the Big East could be numb to challenges of this sort. When the two major polls were released Monday, a staggering nine league teams - including West Virginia for the first time this season - were ranked among the Top 25. (See story, below.)

So here it is - for West Virginia, the first of a stretch of huge games between ranked teams. In this case it is a 7 p.m. contest between the No. 25 Mountaineers (11-2, 1-0 Big East) and the fifth-ranked Huskies (12-1, 1-1). The game will be televised by ESPNU.

"Look at some of the other teams. Rutgers had Pitt and Connecticut their first two games,'' Ruoff said, not even mentioning that the Scarlet Knights also had North Carolina in a streak in which they incredibly faced teams ranked Nos. 1, 2 and 3 at the time back-to-back-to-back. "Georgetown had Connecticut and Pitt. I mean, wow. This whole season is going to be like this. But I'm ready to get started.''

The question, of course, is whether the rest of the Mountaineers are similarly prepared. Down to one healthy point guard and playing three freshmen and two sophomores in an eight-man rotation, this is a team that still has some growing to do. And Ruoff was fairly blunt in trying to assess where West Virginia is right now.

"This team's success is going to be like a meter that shows how fast our young guys develop, the guys who haven't played a lot,'' Ruoff said. "The quicker they get it, the quicker they buy in and realize what the Big East is about, the better we're going to be. But you can only tell them so much. They have to experience it.''

So far, freshmen Devin Ebanks, Kevin Jones and that only healthy point guard, Darryl "Truck" Bryant, have progressed as quickly as anyone might have hoped. Sophomore John Flowers has made vast improvements from a year ago and sophomore Cam Thoroughman has been solid in what he's been asked to do, which is fill in during foul trouble and play aggressively.

But the Mountaineers haven't faced a team like Connecticut so far, either. They've played ranked teams, the best of which was probably Ohio State, and beat the Buckeyes on the road by 28 points. But that was also a young Ohio State team.

"I think what UConn has is they're not playing any freshmen,'' West Virginia coach Bob Huggins said. "They're playing people who have been through this league and understand the rigors of this league and understand how hard it is to play in this league on a day-to-day basis. And I think that's a tremendous advantage for them.''

Connecticut is about as well balanced as any team in the league. They can score and defend inside with 7-foot-3 junior Hasheem Thabeet and rugged 6-7, 243-pound senior Jeff Adrien, they have athletic wings like 6-9 junior Stanley Robinson and they are loaded in the backcourt with senior point guard A.J. Price, Jerome Dyson and Craig Austrie. UConn has stubbed its toe just once, losing at home to Georgetown last week in the league opener.

A year ago, West Virginia lost a late-season game at Connecticut - the game in which Joe Alexander began his amazing late-season scoring explosion - and then beat the Huskies in the second round of the Big East tournament.

Is this team better prepared than last year to handle teams like UConn and the rest of the Big East heavyweights?

"Man, that's tough. That's hard to compare to last year because we were good coming down the stretch,'' Ruoff said. "That Big East [tournament] game we had last year against Connecticut? We're not there yet. But do we have the potential to pass that? We do.''

Tonight's game, though, deals in reality and not potential. After Rutgers played those teams ranked 1-2-3 in the country, Rutgers coach Fred Hill said he thought UConn had the best defense of the three. Considering that the now-departed Alexander was most of WVU's offense against the Huskies last year, that's a concern.

"That's my biggest concern, how we score,'' Huggins said. "Joe had what, 32 and 34 a year ago and they had a hard time matching with him. We've got to have some patience and we're got to kind of attack them in areas we think they're vulnerable. I haven't found very many, to be honest with you. But the beauty of what we do is we can change some things offensively to try to maybe take advantage of an area we think we can take advantage of.''

Reach Dave Hickman at 304-348-1734 or dphickm...@aol.com.