MORGANTOWN — In 2013, the West Virginia men’s basketball program lost Jabarie Hinds, Aaron Brown, Voldy Gerun and Keaton Miles, who all were at one time considered to be a foundation to the Mountaineers’ future, but had then decided to transfer to other schools.
In 2014, both Eron Harris and Terry Henderson — considered much bigger pieces to WVU’s foundation than the previous four — also jumped ship and transferred.
Two years, six players, and at the time, you would have thought if the boat that was the WVU men’s hoops program wasn’t already sinking, it at least had a number of holes in it and was taking on water.
At that time, everything was flying around in the form of rumors and speculation, from head coach Bob Huggins not being able to connect with the current generation of athletes, to the players themselves being selfish and disloyal.
That was seven years ago and in those seven years, WVU has had five 20-win seasons, five trips to the NCAA tournament, three trips to the Sweet 16 and three trips to the championship game of the Big 12 tournament.
Also, in those seven years, the NCAA Transfer Portal was created and a blanket waiver was approved for transfers to be able to move to another school without sitting out, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic.
What was once thought to be disaster in 2014 when multiple players transferred out from the same school is now simply the way things are done.
That doesn’t exactly make it all right, and doesn’t make it all wrong, either.
In 2021, WVU has seen Oscar Tshiebwe, Emmitt Matthews Jr. and Jordan McCabe transfer, while Sean McNeil has put his name into the 2021 NBA Draft.
Tshiebwe is already enrolled at Kentucky. McCabe and Matthews combined for 116 starts over three years.
After the 2020 season, Brandon Knapper transferred.
After the 2019 season, five players transferred and Sagaba Konate declared for the NBA Draft with one season of eligibility remaining.
And before we go even further, there is the possibility more players will announce some sort of departure this off-season, whether it will be through the draft or by transfer.
We can waste time by categorizing each one, saying Tshiebwe was either right or wrong in believing his best path to the NBA was not with Huggins and the Mountaineers, or that McCabe is in search of playing time, and Matthews maybe sees a greener pasture somewhere else.
We can debate all day that maybe these current players should take a lesson from those who came before them at WVU and transferred out, but didn’t quite have the finish to their careers that they hoped for.
Trey Doomes, who transferred to Chattanooga in 2019, just announced Friday he was transferring again.
Teddy Allen, who transferred out of WVU in 2018, is now currently in the portal again looking for his fourth school in four years.
We can keep going. Lamont West wanted to look at his options, but finished his career at a smaller school and with less playing time than he had at WVU, and so on and so on.
“Bet on yourself,” which is what Matthews posted on Twitter in announcing he was transferring Thursday, sounds great on social media, but the reality of it is it doesn’t always work out as planned.
This isn’t condemning Matthews for his choice, nor is it to black ball the hundreds upon hundreds of other players currently in the portal.
They have rights and options to make their own decisions on how to best handle their own lives that weren’t exactly afforded to other athletes that came in previous decades.
Has that made a mockery of the NCAA’s model for competition? You bet.
Does it make it more difficult for schools such as WVU to sustain success on a year-to-year basis? Absolutely.
If we are to buy in on this-is-just-the-way-things-are theory, then WVU is far from the only school in this situation.
Kentucky has a once highly-recruited freshman in the portal, so does Duke, North Carolina, and Texas Tech.
Pitt may wind up with more players in the portal than it currently has on its roster.
Missouri was a top 25 team for parts of this season and made it to the NCAA tournament, but just saw its second-leading scorer, Xavier Pinson, announce he was transferring.
All of this is to say, yes, it is frustrating to see guys like Matthews and McCabe leave WVU.
If more of their teammates follow, it will be equally, if not more, frustrating.
We just can no longer view it as the ship taking on water, maybe how we did back in 2014, because that simply isn’t the case.
If we are to go by the track record set by Huggins and his assistants over the past seven years, there will be some answers found.
New faces will flood into the Coliseum. Basketball will still be played.
If the portal takes, then it also gives.
It’s now up to the WVU staff to make the right decisions, which is where the focus should be, rather than worrying ourselves on why guys are leaving in the first place.
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