MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The box score is not where you look to understand Gabe Osabuohien's value to this year's West Virginia University men's basketball team.
 
You have to watch him and watch him and watch him some more to truly appreciate all he does for the Mountaineers, much the way Joe Mazzulla, Cam Thoroughman and Nate Adrian once did.
 
West Virginia is just a better basketball team whenever Big Gabe is on the floor.
 
Former NBA player Rex Chapman has a popular Twitter feed that frequently posts videos of people crashing into each other with golf carts, car crashes or other things he labels Block or Charge?
 
Osabuohien can certainly relate because he's one of the best in the country at moving his feet and getting in front of people to take charges.
 
"For me to get real time, I knew I had to play defense and stuff like that," he says. "Once I did that, landing that time on the court and playing however many minutes I do is by playing hard. I stuck with it and kept being the guy that does the little stuff that nobody else wants to do if that was going to land me on the court."
 
Getting to the United States to play college basketball was something Osabuohien, a Toronto native, wanted to do ever since he watched Thornhill, Canada's Andrew Wiggins star at Kansas.
 
Wiggins sort of opened the door for other Canadian players to come to the U.S. and play basketball.
 
"The Canadian that made it out really was only Andrew Wiggins. He was the only one we could look up to. He left Canada, went to a prep school, played for Kansas and was a draft pick in the NBA," Osabuohien explains. "That was kind of the vision for every Canadian kid to be like him. Just growing up and watching Andrew playing for Kansas and now getting the opportunity to play against Kansas shows I was on the same level as him and accomplished some of the same things he did."
 
Gabe says he takes issue with some who say Canadian players don't have the toughness American players have.
 
"Apparently they say Americans play harder and more physical and stuff like that, but obviously, it's not true," he says. "I do feel like a lot of Canadian kids take it personally, and they feel like they've got to come and prove themselves to show that just like how Americans are Canadians are the same way."
 
"Yeah, I think I've proven to be sort of a tough guy," he chuckles.
 
He says he's thankful for the opportunity to play college basketball in the United States, first at Arkansas for two seasons and then the last two here at West Virginia.
Osabuohien was going to get an opportunity to showcase his abilities in the NCAA Tournament before last year's season was canceled because of COVID-19. 
 
This year, the 17^th-rated Mountaineers are on track to get there, which means people back home in Canada will get a chance to see him perform on college basketball's biggest stage.
 
"My motivation is probably where I come from and stuff like that - not having everything available to me at a young age and now growing up and having all of these opportunities … having Mountaineer Nation cheer for me and stuff like that; I never imagined stuff like that growing up," he says.
 
"The main sport for people growing up was hockey obviously," he says. "It's a Canadian thing. Now, I would say over the past couple of years it's transitioning to basketball. More people are starting to leave Canada and go to prep schools and stuff like that to go to the NCAA."
 
Osabuohien admits he's thankful for the opportunities basketball has already presented him in his young life.
 
"Most people from where I'm from don't leave or make it out of Canada, and I was able to go to a whole other country and make a name for myself and have a whole stadium cheer me on for playing hard and stuff like that," he says.
 
"I feel like I've made them proud, but there is a whole lot more. I'm not even halfway yet."
 
This week's Life as a Mountaineer was produced by Sarah Ramundt and is presented each week by our friends at Panhandle Cleaning & Restoration.