MORGANTOWN — One team, West Virginia, is trying to claw its way back to where it’s been before while the other, Iowa State, is trying to get to where it’s never been before.

That, by definition, makes the 8 p.m. Saturday night meeting between the two schools in Milan Puskar Stadium on Fox a big game, but the ramifications go far beyond that as it might well be the biggest game either coach will coach this season.

The Mountaineers, of course, enter off two straight victories over suspect teams, neither of which has won a Big 12 game yet this season, to lift its record to 3-2 as it tries to regain its national respect and maybe even a chance at a national ranking.

The Cyclones, on the other hand, have won all five of their starts to climb to No. 11 in the rankings. A sixth straight victory would be a first for Iowa State since 1938 and should they find a way to win the Big 12, it would be the school’s first conference title ever.

Don’t think that isn’t on coach Matt Campbell’s mind. He addressed it as early as Big 12 Media Day in July.

“We’ve been able to get to the Big 12 Championship game,” Campbell said then. “We’ve been able to win the regular-season conference and we’ve been really close in a lot of other seasons. I think, as a young team coming off a rough year in 2022 and the way our team and football program responded last year, it was really fun to watch this football team come back to, really, the standard of who we are and what we’ve been and what we’ve been has been really special.”

“I think the message is that nobody’s done it here,” Campbell said in his weekly press conference.

The Cyclones came close in 2020 when they reached the conference championship game only to lose to Oklahoma, 27-21.

The streak without a conference championship is now at 133 years and the fans in Ames, which is very similar to Morgantown in many ways with its athletics and the following they have, deserve better.

Campbell, as hard as it is to believe, is in his 10th season at Iowa State. He came in and took over a program that, with Kansas, was the butt of jokes over their football futility.

In the 10 years before Campbell’s arrival, the record in Big 12 play was 18-45.

To give you how barren the history of football at Iowa State is one need only realize that in nine years Campbell has become the all-time winningest coach in the program with a 58-48 record. He replaced Paul Rhoads, who had replaced Gene Clizik, who replaced Dan McCartney.

Those three had coached the program over the previous 21 seasons and gone 90-154.

Iowa State was a graveyard for coaches. Both Earl Bruce, who replaced Woody Hayes at Ohio State, and Johnny Majors, who had been big-time coaches at Pitt and Tennessee, got nowhere at Iowa State. Bruce’s record at the school was 36-32 and Majors’ was 24-30-1.

But no more. Campbell turned things around and in the new Big 12 Iowa State is a major player and has done it methodically.

“I think we have always been very process-oriented here, rather than being very outcome-oriented,” Campbell said. “That’s really where we’re trying to live.”

In that way, he is very similar to Neal Brown, who like Campbell had a rebuilding job when he took over. He had a vision, shaped not only the football playbook but the culture to a place where he wanted it, and thought this year might be the season where everything came together.

But a schedule that had him opening with No. 9 Penn State and playing rival Pitt — both teams currently 5-0 — left him in a hole and once again fighting for his coaching life.

There are those who would say it is an injustice, as WVU seemed ready to put Pitt in the win column with a 10-point lead with four minutes to play, but they had no one but themselves for letting it slip away.

Still, things would look much different if they were 4-1 instead of 3-2.

The fact of the matter is that the jury remains out on both teams and that the outcome of this game will go a long way to creating the aura the team carries through the remainder of the season.

“You’re really judged by who you are at the end of the year and who you become through this journey,” Campbell said.

Brown has seen what Campbell has put together in Ames, a blue-collar, hard-working, hard-hitting tradition of football based on defense and a gritty run-first offense that makes more use of tight ends than anyone in the country.

“I have a ton of respect for Iowa State and what Coach Campbell has built there,” Brown said this week.

It is mutual. Campbell is aware that WVU has the pieces on offense to test the nation’s 13th-ranked total defense, including the ability to play keep-away from Oklahoma State on the road last week, holding the ball for 47 minutes while running 81 plays in a dominating 38-14 victory.

Is Iowa State’s defense able to control the running offense built around quarterback Garrett Greene, Jahiem White and CJ Donaldson?

“Boy, I don’t know,” Campbell said this week. “I guess we’re going to find out on Saturday. They present a real problem for everybody. Everybody they have played, they have really challenged in terms of what they’ve been able to do and anytime you’re going to play a great rushing attack it’s going to take all 11 players on the defensive side of the ball.

“And, I think any time the quarterback’s got the ability to run, it can put your defensive rules in conflict really fast and they do a great job of challenging that.”

Last week the Mountaineers rushed for 389 yards in a game that saw White, a freshman All-American last season who had been quiet to date, have a breakout game with 158 yards on the ground while Greene gained 86.

If Iowa State can put the Mountaineers into a position where they must throw, it could get ugly for the Cyclones’ pass defense is fifth in the nation, helping them rank sixth nationally allowing only 10 points a game.

“Coach (Jon) Heacock has done a great job as defensive coordinator,” Brown said. “I mean, they’ve got a system that’s in place that they’ve been running for a number of years. He’s got answers, he does a really good job countering within a game.

“Statistically you can look at it, they speak for themselves. I don’t need to get up here and talk a whole bunch, just look at the stat sheet and it tells you what you need to know about them defensively. They mix up coverages. I think their defensive line, they’ve done a nice job recruiting big, long bodies that make the defense go because they eat up the gaps.”

The offense runs off a quarterback with a familiar last name in Rocco Becht, son of WVU Athletic Hall of Fame tight end Anthony Becht, who will be honored for his induction into the Hall during the game.

“Rocco’s playing at a high level,” Brown said. “He keeps plays alive and is very efficient with the football. And in running that offense at a really efficient level.”