MORGANTOWN — Bob Huggins is well aware of how you would fix the West Virginia men’s hoops program.
He sees the same things you do and he knows what you know, too.
He recognizes Baylor’s 2021 national title was built, in part, due to the success of transfers such as Davion Mitchell, MaCio Teague, Jonathan Tchamwa Tchatchoua and Adam Flagler.
Of the top 10 teams in the AP Top 25 right now, No. 5 Purdue and No. 9 Duke are the only ones who don’t have a transfer among their top five players.
Huggins knows all the stats and trends, and where it concerns the future of WVU men’s basketball, there is an opportunity for a type of quick fix through the 1,800 free agents that will be in the transfer portal later this year.
That opportunity dangles there as the greatest of temptations, but, here and now, we’re telling you Huggins does not need to pick from that fruit.
No matter what you may believe. No matter what the trends and stats say.
“Everybody wants to talk about this damn portal and what I’ll do,” Huggins said a couple of weeks ago, as the Mountaineers were getting ready to face Texas Tech.
Just the fact that Huggins refers to it as the “damn” portal gives you, at the very least, a reference point on what he thinks on the impact of the transfer portal.
We can guess as to why he curses at it, which is to simply say other than Juwan Staten and Gabe Osabuhien, Huggins hasn’t had any other Division I transfers come in and help WVU reach the NCAA tournament.
That’s over the entire 15 years Huggins has been in Morgantown.
Meanwhile, he’s had success finding diamonds in the rough like Jevon Carter. He’s had success with junior-college recruits like Jaysean Paige and Tarik Phillip and he’s had success with developing a few top 100 recruits like Kevin Jones and Devin Williams and turning them into men.
Which brings us to the future of this program as it stands now.
A lot of older guys are leaving after this season, and that could include guards Kedrian Johnson and Sean McNeil, who do have the option to return for their COVID-19 extra senior year.
If they’re all gone, the only real “veteran” still on the roster would be forward Jalen Bridges.
That, in itself, would make most of us scream for WVU to hit the portal hard. Get older. Get more experienced. Get better.
Here’s the other opinion.
We have no idea how much better Isiah Cottrell gets next season or Kobe Johnson or Seth Wilson or James Okonkwo or Jamel King.
They’re all just freshmen.
“We’ve got some freshmen who can be really good players and be good players here,” Huggins said. “I would like to see them be players for years to come here. That’s extremely important.”
We don’t even know how much better Bridges can be under the guide of being “the man” on the team without the crutch of a McNeil or Taz Sherman to lean on.
Is it possible that the combination of Cottrell and Okonkwo develop into the type of pairing we hoped we’d see from Derek Culver and Oscar Tshiebwe?
Potentially that could be the case, but we’ll never find out if Huggins raids the portal and brings in another two or three older power forwards like he did this season.
We’ll never find out if Kobe Johnson and Wilson can become the pairing we saw with Carter and Daxter Miles Jr. if Huggins goes out and brings in a ton of guards from the portal.
“Am I supposed to tell those guys, “Hey, listen, there’s some guys in the portal better than you are, so you guys probably need to find someplace else to go?’ Huggins asked. “That’s happened. It’s never going to happen on my watch, but it’s happened.”
It has happened, and, yes, it has happened with positive results at other schools.
To be sure, Huggins could still have as many as four more scholarships to hand out this spring. Technically he could sign four guys from the portal without running anyone off the team.
The result of that, though, is those younger guys likely get tired of waiting and leave on their own. In that scenario, WVU now becomes very dependent on transfers in future recruiting classes, because they’ve run out of youth.
That can’t be what you want, even if did mean a better record next season. More to the point, it’s not what Huggins wants.
I get it, it’s sexy to go grab new names from the portal every year. It’s worked well for some schools, especially the ones who actually do their homework and bring in the right guys.
At WVU, it’s a matter of being able to see the forest through the trees. I believe that’s what Huggins is banking on where it concerns the future of this program.
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