MORGANTOWN — This will be Bob Huggins’ first trip to the Big East basketball tournament, but West Virginia’s first-year coach is no stranger to postseason play.

His teams have won nine championships in three different leagues while posting a 31-10 record in 19 different conference tournaments.

Those teams moved on to 22 appearances in the NCAA (15), NIT (5) and NAIA (2) tournaments at four previous stops during his amazingly successful collegiate coaching career.

So taking the fifth-seeded Mountaineers to New York’s Madison Square Garden for today’s 2 p.m. clash with Providence is something Huggins cherishes. ESPN will televise the action.

WVU is 22-9 in all games and 11-7 in the conference, the 12th-seeded Friars 15-15 and 6-12.

While the Mountaineers swept the regular-season home-and-home series, neither Huggins nor Providence coach Tim Welsh thinks that will have any bearing on this third meeting in a series WVU leads 12-11.

“I think we know what they’re going to do and they know what we’re going to do, so let’s go play,” Huggins said earlier in the week.

“We’re getting ready to play Providence. Hopefully, we will beat Providence and then go back to the hotel and watch who we’ll play next.”

The winner will advance to the quarterfinals against No. 4-seeded Connecticut at 2 p.m. Thursday. The semifinals will be played Friday night, with the championship contest at 9 p.m. Saturday.

“We’ve been fortunate to play some great teams in Conference USA, the Big 12 and other tournaments, and certainly the Big East isn’t any different,” Huggins said. “But there are more great teams in the Big East.”

In other first-round games, No. 8 Villanova plays No. 9 Syracuse at noon, No. 7 Pitt goes against No. 10 Cincinnati at 7 p.m. and No. 6 Marquette meets No. 11 Seton Hall in the 9 p.m. nightcap.

Darris Nichols, WVU senior point guard, played just 21 minutes in the regular-season overtime win at St. John’s last Saturday because of a painfully sprained ankle. But he said Monday he definitely expects to be fully recovered in time to start against Providence.

Unlike the opposing head coaches, Nichols thinks it is tough to beat a team three times in the same year.

“They have done some things against us different from when they played other teams,” he noted. “When they played us they played mostly man-to-man, but they played mostly zone against other teams.

“So we don’t really know what to expect.”

Huggins thinks Joe Alexander, who scored 32, 32 and 29 in the last three games, certainly is playing his best basketball right now.

“But we haven’t shot as consistently as we’d like,” the veteran coach said. “Darris Nichols’ playing on a bad ankle Saturday certainly didn’t help us any.

“But, hopefully, he will be back full strength for the tournament.”

Welsh, in his 10th year as Providence’s coach, calls the matchup against West Virginia “a challenging one.”

He said, “Two games this year with them didn’t go the way we wanted, obviously, and that’s a combination of West Virginia’s great athleticism and toughness on the defensive end and some very, very good balance on the offense.

“And of recently, Joe Alexander has proven he’s one of he top players in our league. But they also have a lot of answers out there. We’ve played them quite often.”

WVU topped Providence in a 92-79 shootout in the first round of last year’s tournament.

“We’re playing one of the top-notch teams in the country, and we’re going to have to play better than they do,” Welsh said.

Alexander, the 6-foot-8 junior forward, has built his scoring average to 16.2 and is pulling down 6.1 rebounds per game. He also leads WVU in offensive rebounds with 71.

Also holding double-digit scoring gaits are 6-6 junior guard Alex Ruoff (14.1), 6-7 sophomore Da’Sean Butler (12.5) and Nichols (11.2).

Providence also has four averaging 10 or more ppg. Those are 6-1 Jeff Xavier (12.5), 6-5 Weyinmi Efejuku (11.6), 6-4 Brian McKenzie (11.0) and 6-8 Geoff McDermott (10.4). McDermott is the top rebounder with 8.2 per game.

WVU has won seven of its last eight games against Providence, including 77-65 and 80-53 this year. The Mountaineers finished this season strong, winning four of the last five games.