Go ahead and joke about West Virginia University's NCAA tournament sentence.

		Scouting report School: Creighton University (23-10) Location: Omaha, Neb. Enrollment: 6,700 Coach: Dana Altman is 218-110 in 11 Creighton seasons and 301-186 overall. The skinny: Junior guard Nate Funk, second in Missouri Valley Conference scoring at 17.6 ppg, fuels a Creighton 3-point barrage that ranked fourth in the NCAA. The Bluejays shot 41.5 percent from the arc and made 285 3-pointers this season. ... The Bluejays earned their sixth NCAA bid in the past seven years with a 75-57 victory against Southwest Missouri State in the Missouri Valley Conference title game -- their eighth consecutive triumph.

For all their Big East sweat and toil, for winning 21 games this winter, for surviving four wearying days in the conference's annual Madison Square Garden party, the fellas get ... a trip to Cleveland?

"That hurts," Mountaineers coach John Beilein replied over the telephone last night, exuding Rust Belt empathy along with NCAA at-large invitation excitement. "You're talking to a guy from Buffalo here.

"I grew up in an area very much like Cleveland. I've been to Cleveland Indians games before. And, of course, it's [swingman] Mike Gansey's hometown.

"It's a wonderful place to go."

Yes, it's maddening March, when even Cleveland can transform into a basketball paradise. That's because seventh-seeded WVU (21-10) meets 10th-seeded Creighton (23-10) in a first-round game there Thursday at Cleveland State's Wolstein Center. The survivor will play the winner between Wake Forest and Tennessee-Chattanooga for the right to advance to the Albuquerque, N.M., region.

Beilein didn't underestimate the role of geography in his team's bracket serendipity.

Whereas Pitt must travel 2,136 miles to Boise, Idaho, and Villanova 799 to Nashville, Tenn., and Syracuse 275 to Worcester, Mass., the Mountaineers -- and, almost as important, their vociferous fans -- will need only a short bus ride to northeast Ohio.

Their 197-mile venture will be one of the shortest for the opening round, almost as short as No. 1 seed Illinois' 121-mile ride to Indianapolis and the 143-mile trip to Charlotte, N.C., for two other No. 1 seeds, Duke and North Carolina.

	Matt Freed, Post-Gazette West Virginia's Patrick Beilein gets caught up by Syracue's Josh Pace in the Big East Championship game Saturday. Click photo for larger image.

"As you know, getting out of Morgantown isn't always that easy," said Beilein, the third-year coach who last reached the NCAAs with Richmond in 1997-98 -- which also was the last time WVU got there, winning twice in the West region to reach the Sweet 16.

"That three-and-a-half hour trip ...

"We're very fortunate."

But the NCAA selection committee did the Mountaineers no favor with their first-round foe. Creighton, winner of eight consecutive games, shoots 3-pointers with more alacrity and accuracy than these Mountaineers -- 41.5 percent, ranking fourth in the most recent NCAA statistics, to 35 percent.

So this could become a duel at 19 feet, 9 inches.

"They shoot it a lot, and they shoot it better than us right now," Beilein said of Creighton's nine-deep team that includes four 3-point shooters who have converted better than 35 percent and made at least 42 such shots.

In fact, he so admired Dana Altman's program at the Omaha, Neb., Jesuit school that it served as a pattern from the moment he arrived in Morgantown from Richmond three years ago.

"That was a little bit of my plan," he added.

"That was the point when the Creightons and the Gonzagas and the Butlers ... were in the NCAA tournament with the big boys and beating them. I said, 'Why don't we do what those teams do a little more, recruit kids like that and win in the Big East that way?' "

Beilein's team started 10-0 this season, earned a Top 25 ranking and promptly stumbled in conference play -- losing seven of nine.

Behind Gansey, Kevin Pittsnogle and Tyrone Sally, the Mountaineers have surged with seven victories in their past nine games, a roll that included three victories in three days last week, among them a win against top-seeded Boston College and ranked Villanova.

They lost to Syracuse, 68-59, in the Big East tournament final Saturday night, whereupon they returned to WVU Coliseum early yesterday to find 500 appreciative fans.

The coach plans to do "light things" with the Mountaineers today before launching into Bluejays' scouting reports and practices.

		Progress Report Follow the progress of the nation's best Division I basketball teams as they compete for a spot in the NCAA Final Four: Latest men's and women's brackets.

"We hope we can get our legs back," he said of resuming work so soon after the four New York games in succession.

"It will not be an excuse for us."

For the record, West Virginia hasn't played Creighton in basketball since 1932.

"Was Mickey Furfari at that game?" Beilein joked, referring to the state's esteemed septuagenarian sports writer and the 27-26, Morgantown loss by then-coach Francis Stadsvold's lads.

"See if Mickey can remember that."