MORGANTOWN — It was just a month ago – Jan. 6 to be exact – when the WVU men’s basketball team put the clamps on Cincinnati’s greatest strength.

The Bearcats’ twin towers of 7-foot-1 Moustapha Thiam and 6-11 Baba Miller were held to a combined eight points. Neither one grabbed more rebounds than WVU’s 5-9 guard Honor Huff, who finished with eight boards and the Mountaineers were able to match Cincinnati’s 18 points in the paint and finished the game on a 10-3 run to pull out a slim 62-60 victory.

“That was huge,” WVU guard Jasper Floyd. “That is one of their strengths and I think we did a really good job of taking that away.”

You would think WVU head coach Ross Hodge would have one of the easiest jobs in the world today, when the Mountaineers (14-8, 5-4 Big 12) head to Cincinnati’s Fifth Third Arena at 7 p.m. today for the rematch.

His pregame talk will need all of eight simple words: Just do the same thing as last time.

It doesn’t exactly work like that.

“You’re looking at the things they did the first time that hurt us and you would imagine that they’re looking at that and feel like they have advantages in those areas,” Hodge said. “What can you do to counter-balance that? You’re also predicting things you did to hurt them and assume they may have a counter to not let you do that again.”

What may have worked the first time doesn’t always work again.

“There is such a slim margin of error in these types of games,” Hodge said.

The pregame preparation becomes a guessing game of sorts, even though it’s an opponent the Mountaineers have already played.

“They have really good players and great coaches over there, too,” was how Floyd explained it. “I’m sure they’ll make adjustments. I trust our game plan that our coaches have come up with. I trust my teammates and myself are going to execute that plan.

“If we do need to make adjustments, the players need to do a good job of listening to it and executing it.”

The words spoken by Hodge and Floyd sound as if they are meant for another game, one played with rooks, a king and pawns rather than a ball and two baskets.

“It’s a chess match, for sure,” Floyd said.

Scouting a team for a rematch is more about anticipation than anything else. It’s a guessing game, trying to predict what changes an opponent will make the second time around. On the other side, Cincinnati’s head coach Wes Miller will be doing the same thing.

There is a major asterisk in it all, though, in that even the most detailed scouting report can’t predict what may be unpredictable. Players and teams go through hot and cold spells. That’s found throughout college basketball and the Big 12 is no different.

Take West Virginia’s recent scoring slump. The Mountaineers haven’t scored more than 59 points over their last three games. How could anyone see that coming when WVU shot a combined 51% in the two games that preceded them?

Even in the case of Cincinnati (11-11, 3-6), Miller looked like a heavyweight post player on Jan. 28, against Baylor, when he finished with 18 points and 17 rebounds. The game before that, Miller went for 23 points and nine rebounds against Arizona State.

He followed those up by scoring two points on 1 for 8 shooting against Houston, which leads into today’s matchup against WVU.

Does Miller become a dominant force again, or can WVU find another way to limit his touches as it did in the first meeting?

“You do have to anticipate they watched the film, too, and they now have a way to get those players involved at a higher level,” Hodge said. “Baba is so talented and Thiam has such great length. You have to make sure you’re not giving them second-chance points and keep them out of transition. You have to make sure you’re doing the little things to make it hard on them.”

For Cincinnati, do the Bearcats predict that West Virginia will continue to struggle offensively, or is this a game where Huff gets going again after going 1 for 13 from the floor in last week’s 63-53 loss against Baylor?

“When we went back and looked at the good possessions we had, we had really good spacing. That allows players to make really good and aggressive decisions with the ball, ” Hodge said. “The last couple of games when we got bogged down a little bit, spacing has been poor. You look at how other people are guarding us and make sure your spacing isn’t getting in the way in how you attack that.”