MORGANTOWN, W. Va. — Each year the list of Division I men’s basketball transfers continues to grow — there were more than 875 listed in the transfer portal this summer — and each year Bob Huggins has sort of distanced himself from that line of recruiting.
Quick fact: The last Division I transfer to suit up for the Mountaineers was Juwan Staten.
That was 2015.
Since then, the transfer game has become such a big deal, well, they created a portal for starters, but the NCAA also went out of its way to redefine its own rule book in order to better clarify which athletes can get a waiver to play immediately and which ones have to sit out a year per NCAA rules.
It failed miserably, of course. Instead of taking the opportunity to map out specifics on what it would take to earn a waiver, the organization simply added the words “extenuating” and “extraordinary” to what is already an outdated and sometimes silly-beyond-belief set of rules.
Alas, we’re are getting off point, which is to simply say Huggins, for the most part, hasn’t built his program with transfers.
He’s signed three over his first 12 years at WVU: Staten, Aaric Murray and Matt Humphrey, who was a graduate transfer and came to WVU with one season of eligibility.
Kansas has had three transfers just in the last two years. Iowa State seemingly signs three transfers every 10 minutes.
This isn’t to say WVU coaches don’t keep their collective eyes on the portal and it’s well known the Mountaineers took a stab at Arkansas at Little Rock guard Rayjon Tucker this summer, before Tucker ultimately turned pro.
As to why Huggins hasn’t gone all-in with transfers, we offer up this young man: Miles McBride.
We’ll also thrown in Jevon Carter, who went from little-known freshman to second-round NBA draft pick in four years.
We’re not saying McBride is the next Carter, but the freshman from Cincinnati has taken a lot of early steps in that direction.
“We played him at point guard some and he did a good job running the team,” Huggins said of McBride after the team returned from its exhibition tour of Spain earlier this month. “I thought his ball security was really good. He may have been our best perimeter defender. He shot the ball well. He’s physical enough to guard people bigger than him, but he can also guard people smaller than him. I thought he had a great trip.”
West Virginia has one remaining scholarship entering next season, two if junior-college prospect Ethan Richardson is unable to enroll this week, as WVU begins its fall semester.
Guessing it would be real easy for Huggins to pick up some guys out of the portal to fill those spots.
It would have been just as easy for Huggins to go out and look for a point-guard quick fix in 2015, after Staten and Gary Browne graduated.
But then we may have never heard of Carter, who developed into the school’s all-time steals leader and was the two-time national defensive player of the year.
If Tucker had decided to transfer to WVU, sure it could have been an interesting season.
Probably not for McBride, who averaged 10.3 points, 5.7 rebounds and 3.3 steals during the Mountaineers’ three games in Spain.
You don’t develop by sitting on the bench and watching. In today’s game, you’re most likely to transfer after sitting the bench for a season.
And while McBride probably won’t become an instant star in his first year, that’s not to say he won’t be the program’s best player in 2022.
It’s just a matter of Huggins and his coaches developing McBride and having the patience to get there.
Therein lies part of the answer to the this whole transfer quandary. A recent study showed that 79 percent of the 353 Division I teams had at least one player in the portal this summer. West Virginia had five.
According to NCAA figures, 40 percent of all freshman men’s basketball players who enroll at one school will not be at that school by the time they are juniors.
Many find those numbers troublesome and are looking to the NCAA to come up with some way to cap it.
The reason so many transfer is because its so easy to find a new home.
And that is simply the majority of coaches looking for the quick fix instead of trusting their own recruiting process.
That’s where it all has to begin. If 875 athletes don’t get picked by new schools every year, then 875 athletes probably aren’t transferring.
Is that unreasonable? Absolutely, especially when we’re talking about 353 coaches hell-bent on winning now with about 300 of them being easily replaceable with a couple of bad years under their belts.
Is it unrealistic? That ultimately is a question for the coaches to decide.
I just believe Huggins is in a much better situation with four years of McBride than with one or two years of a quick fill-in.
That’s probably the case for most of the coaches out there, too, but it requires an enormous amount of faith and patience.
Over his 12 years at WVU, Huggins has shown plenty of both.
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