MORGANTOWN โ Unless you've gone elk hunting in Montana over the past few years, you may have noticed a dramatic change in college basketball.
X's and O's were once the most important items in the game, but now they've been replaced by NIL money, and the hardest working and most important person in the basketball office is no longer the coach, but instead the recruiting coordinator. Masu. .
Recruiting has become the name of the game…it's a year-round effort, and you'll likely be reworking your roster every year.
Last year, the Mountaineers parted ways with coach Bob Huggins and had to rebuild their roster for the second time in one season, while injuries and suspensions changed the season for Abbott. This point was driven to West Virginia when they had to try to negotiate to get through it. And Costello's slapstick basketball routine.
Now they have a new coach in Darian DeVries, a successful mid-major leader from Drake, who has started a complete rebuild, with the only returning player being Ofri Nabe, a late addition from Israel and a transfer. Since the portal had just closed, he and DeVries found a new coach. How to add some important parts.
For one, it turns out he only had to look across the dinner table to bring in his son, Tucker. He matched his father's 21.6 points per game last year at Drake and has a career average of 18.0 points with one year left of play.
This helped the scoring guard, but who would give him the ball?
The problem was solved this week with the addition of Javon Small, a skilled point guard and ball distributor from Oklahoma State University. This is a huge addition, and WVU has a recruiting class that has jumped out of the portal to No. 5 in the nation, even though it still has a lot of work to do.
But the roster is taking shape, and Small is a big part of it.
Last season, West Virginia only played Oklahoma State and Small College once, but the Cowboys finished tied for last in the Big 12 with a conference record of 4-14, so the schedule is probably the best for the Mountaineers. I wouldn't have been very fortunate.
But the tiebreaker went to the Cowboys, who won the only game against WVU in Stillwater, 70-66, and it was Small who made the difference in the game. Smalls was more of a classic Ashe, scoring 15 points on 5-of-6 shooting from the floor and 2-of-3 from 3-point range, while also adding seven assists, which is expected from a point guard.
But he also had 12 rebounds.
This in itself tends to create euphoria among the Mountaineers faithful, but one would have expected DeVries to have studied more than just that game film.
The reality is that no defense existed that matched the way West Virginia played last season.
The Mountaineers rank 303rd in the nation in points allowed, allowing 76.8 points per game, with 81 or more points allowed in the last five games and 90 or more points allowed in four of the last five games. .
Individual players exploited gaps in the defense, both from outside the 3-point line and from inside the paint.
Seven different players scored 29 or more points against West Virginia, a streak that ended with Dayday Thomas scoring 29 points and Simas Lukosius scoring 31 points in the loss to Cincinnati in the Big 12 Tournament.
So while you shouldn't expect Small to score 25 points a night when he's wearing a WVU jersey, it's possible he can score this season and lead Oklahoma State with 15.9 points per game. Please know.
But more importantly, Small is known as a solid defender, something his replacement, Kerr Kriisa, can't claim, and you can see that at Kentucky, where he signed for his final season. It means being deaf.
Small may not be the second coming of Jevon Carter, but he can get the job done, and he's smart as a point guard.
He's from the basketball area of โโIndiana. He stayed in South Bend until his sophomore year of high school, then moved to Indianapolis. Indiana produced both Oscar Robertson and Larry Bird, so we understand what sports mean in Indiana.
“He's very, very intelligent.” Oklahoma State's Mike Boynton told The Oklahoman in a profile of the point guard last season. “He's trying to take a leadership role. He wants his teammates to learn as much as they can from him.”
And Boynton said there's a lot they can learn from him.
“If you look at his assist-to-turnover ratio over his career, it's always been pretty good. (After two years at East Carolina and one year at Oklahoma State, he had 244 assists and 167 turnovers. recorded)โ Boynton said.
โHe always shoots at a pretty good rate, mostly because he shoots so well.โ He went on to say that the numbers show him shooting 41.4 percent from the floor and 34.7 percent from three.
“He plays with a lot of pride in his team's success, which is a trait of a really good point guard and a lot of kids from the state.
โWhen you talk about basketball in a state like Texas where basketball is king, in Indiana basketball is king.โ Boynton told The Oklahoman. “There's an element of that where basketball is really important and you have guys who have learned to play a certain way if they're going to play. Don't turn the ball over, take good shots, be good teammates. And All of that still rings true.
“This is a basketball state.” Small said. “We don't have as many cameras as other states, like North Carolina or California. But most of the best hoopers, in my opinion, are from Indiana.”