Big 12 Championship Game 2016: West Virginia vs. Kansas Schedule, Preview

It's going to be a tough task to knock off the Kansas Jayhawks in the Big 12 title game.

That will be the challenge on Saturday for the West Virginia Mountaineers.

It's going to be the rubber match between the Jayhawks and Mountaineers. The season series was split with the home team coming out on top. The Jayhawks were the No. 1 team in the nation on Jan. 12, the night West Virginia got 26 points off the bench from Jaysean Paige and upset Kansas in Morgantown.

Kansas got revenge almost a month later, but West Virginia played the Jayhawks tough on their home court. It took five players scoring in double figures for Kansas to win on Feb. 9.

Here's the info you need to know for this much-anticipated title game.

Matchup	Time	TV
No. 2 West Virginia vs. No. 1 Kansas	6 p.m. ET	ESPN

Preview

The Jayhawks made it this far after narrowly escaping the Baylor Bears in Friday's semifinals matchup, 70-66.

Baylor held a 23-21 lead at halftime, but Kansas outscored the Bears 38-22 over the next 17-plus minutes to take a 15-point lead. Although Baylor chipped away at that lead and even came within three points, the Jayhawks did just enough to put away a scrappy Baylor team behind a game-high 20 points from Perry Ellis.

And there were also instances like this: two of Wayne Selden's 11 points, per the Big 12:

But this is going to be Kansas' toughest test so far. The Jayhawks play a team in the championship game that's beaten them once before. West Virginia's 74-63 win in early January was the turning point for the Big 12. The conference had been a two-team race between Kansas and Oklahoma, but the Mountaineers showed how much talent is in this conference.

As for the Mountaineers, their road to the title game seemed easy at first, as they once held a 12-point lead with over seven minutes to play in their semifinal. Oklahoma came back to take a three-point lead with under two minutes remaining before West Virginia took a 69-67 lead late in the game.

Then Buddy Hield almost broke every heart in Morgantown, but his half-court shot with time running out was ruled to have come after the buzzer.

Instead, West Virginia moves on and gets another crack at Kansas. Freelance journalist David Ubben thinks West Virginia is just fine with that:

The hero for West Virginia came in the form of an unlikely figure in sophomore guard Jevon Carter. Guerin Emig of the Tulsa World pointed out Carter went 3-of-20 in the regular season against Oklahoma. On Friday, Carter scored a game-high 26 points on 8-of-13 shooting.

Carter came into the tournament shooting 38 percent from the floor. If West Virginia wants to win this game, Carter will need to make more of an impact than the 10 points he scored on Jan. 12.

The public may want Kansas-Oklahoma III, but this will still be a great contest with an automatic berth in the NCAA tournament on the line.