MORGANTOWN — Outside of COVID-19 bringing a sudden halt to college basketball in 2020, this year may have been the most frustrating ending to West Virginia men’s and women’s seasons in some time.
In the end, you had the WVU men crossing their fingers just to play in the NIT, only to get denied, while the women had a shot to play in the WNIT, only to say, “Thanks, but no thanks.”
And with that, the balls simply quit bouncing inside the Coliseum. It was a sudden and unexpected thud that simply went unheard.
In the weeks to come, you’ll see an interesting offseason begin to unfold for both programs.
WVU women’s coach Mike Carey already lost sophomore center Jeanna Cunningham to the transfer portal on Monday. Based on a few conversations held, some in the athletic department are figuring at least a few more will join her.
Huggins had two players — Seny N’Diaye and Taj Thweatt — enter the portal in January. We don’t know if others will join them and any guess one way or the other would be unnecessary speculation.
We can take an educated guess that both coaches will look to the portal to find some help for next season, and this is where we need to have a serious discussion.
To start, both Carey and Huggins each signed three players from the portal this season with mixed results.
The top of those results was seeing Malik Curry developing into maybe WVU’s best offensive option in the final weeks of the season.
The bottom was watching how Carey looked less and less for 6-foot-6 center Yemiyah Morris to make an impact in her final season of eligibility after transferring from Mississippi State. To be fair, Morris hurt her shoulder in January, which likely played a role in her lack of playing time.
In between you saw Dimon Carrigan and Pauly Paulicap help the WVU men finish second in the Big 12 in blocked shots, but they were also physically limited on defense and offense against bigger and stronger athletes.
Ari Gray and Savannah Samuel were solid for the WVU women, but struggled to find consistency.
Overall, it was the type of portal recruiting classes that made you wonder if this portal thing is all that it’s hyped up to be.
The answer, of course, depends on who you speak with. Huggins will quickly tell you the portal is not the end-all savior fans believe it can be.
If you talk to Baylor coach Scott Drew, well, he’s got a national title from 2021 and a No. 1 seed for the 2022 NCAA tournament that were built from going heavily into the portal.
The likely NCAA men’s Player of the Year for 2022 is a transfer playing at Kentucky, and we won’t go any further with that topic.
The Associated Press named 16 players either first, second and third-team All-Americans on Tuesday and four of those guys (25%) were transfers.
Of the 10 men’s teams who finished in the top 10 of the final AP poll, only No. 5 Tennessee, No. 9 Duke and No. 10 Purdue don’t have a transfer among their top five players.
These are just stats and numbers, and we’ve got a lot more where that came from.
What makes the transfer portal so appealing to fans is the thought of free agency in college sports.
Meaning there’s probably going to be in the neighborhood of 1,800 players in the portal in the weeks following this season, so there’s got to be somebody in there who can help WVU turn things around.
What you don’t hear about the portal is about 80% — maybe more than that — of those players are from smaller or mid-major schools who wind up at other small schools, transfer down to Division II, or don’t find a home altogether.
That roughly leaves only 300 players out there to be picked up by the 80 “big” schools from the Power Five conferences, the Big East, as well as schools that are major players in the recruiting game such as Gonzaga, Houston and Memphis.
In those 300 players, you’ve got players ranging from major impact players to possible all-conference players to role players, and in that small percentage of impact players, there’s no guarantee.
Kansas’ Remy Martin is the finest example there. He was the leading scorer at Arizona State and an all-Pac-12 first-teamer in 2021.
He transfers to Kansas, was named the Big 12 Preseason Player of the Year, and then didn’t live up to those expectations.
True, it works the other way, too. James Akinjo transferred from Arizona to Baylor and was just named a third-team All-American.
Could there be a similar story out there waiting in the portal for WVU’s men’s and women’s teams?
There could be, but it will take a lot of evaluation, patience and a little luck.
It’s not as easy as just going and pulling a name out of the hat and there is still the argument that Huggins and Carey have done better in recruiting freshmen and junior-college recruits and then developing those players.
Whatever route both coaches decide to take, there’s no question this was one disappointing year, and neither can truly afford to have that again next season.
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