Mountaineers Tip Off Preseason Practice Tuesday

2021-2022 Roster
PLAYER	POS	HT
Jalen Bridges	F	6-7
Dimon Carrigan	F	6-9
Isaiah Cottrell	F	6-10
Malik Curry	G	6-1
Kedrian Johnson	G	6-3
Kobe Johnson	G	6-3
Jamel King	F	6-7
Sean McNeil	G	6-3
Seny N'diaye	F	6-10
James Okonkwo	F	6-8
Gabe Osabuohien	F	6-7
Pauly Paulicap	F	6-8
Taz Sherman	G	6-4
Taj Thweatt	F	6-7
Seth Wilson	G	6-1

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – It's probably fitting that Bob Huggins begins his 15^th season at West Virginia University with 15 scholarship basketball players – two more than normal.

Of course, nothing has been normal about the last year and a half due to the coronavirus, which has afforded Taz Sherman and Gabe Osabuohien the opportunity to have senior-season repeats.

Huggins welcomes back eight players in all from last season's 19-10 team that finished 13^th in the AP poll before bowing out in the second round of the NCAA Tournament to Syracuse.

Two players who could have returned this year didn't – guard Deuce McBride, taken in the second round of the NBA Draft by the New York Knicks, and forward Derek Culver, who slipped through the draft.

Of the two, Huggins admits Culver's powerful inside presence is going to be sorely missed this season.

"We've got guards," Huggins said Monday afternoon on the eve of today's first practice. "We're going to miss Derek. Derek could get hard rebounds. Derek was big and strong and people couldn't move him. He could move whoever he wanted to move, and he got big rebounds at the end of games."

This year, it's anybody's guess who Huggins will rely on to score points close to the basket, Huggins included.

Redshirt freshman Isaiah Cottrell certainly has the size at 6-feet-10, 245 pounds, but his skills are more suited for the perimeter. If Huggins opts to go with a four-out offensive system this year and plays Cottrell, it could actually turn into five-out because Cottrell shoots the ball so well from the outside.

"That would open up some driving lanes for us," Huggins admitted.

West Virginia's other options in the paint include Osabuohien, hands down the team's best defender and passer among the bigs, DePaul transfer Pauly Paulicap, Florida International shot-blocker Dimon Carrigan, sophomore Seny N'diaye or promising true freshman James Okonkwo, who has impressed during preseason open gym sessions.

Huggins said the original plan was to redshirt Okonkwo, as he did Jalen Bridges a few years ago, but he's not sure that's going to be an option this year. Okonkwo is originally from England and played in the U.S. last year at Beckley Prep in Beckley, West Virginia, although he saw little action because of a broken finger and COVID-19.

"He is really playing well, and he's far and away the quickest guy off the floor, and he gets to a lot of balls," Huggins noted. "We were pretty well set with bringing him in and redshirting him, but now I'm not sure the more I watch him play."

Carrigan ranked second in Conference USA in blocked shots with 60 last year at Florida International and Huggins is hopeful that can translate to Big 12 play, while Paulicap proved to be more of a scorer and rebounder at DePaul last year averaging 7.2 points and 6.1 rebounds against Big East competition.

Paulicap began his collegiate career at Manhattan.

Cottrell has big-time upside as a former ESPN 100 prospect, but he suffered a season-ending torn Achilles tendon in the Northeastern win last Dec. 29. Huggins said Cottrell has done a great job rehabbing since then and will be ready to go later today.

"From a standpoint of being able to run and jump, (the injury) hasn't affected him at all," Huggins said.

The veteran coach believes Cottrell could be the team's third-best outside shooter after Sherman and Sean McNeil, which is saying a lot considering sophomore Jalen Bridges will be manning one of the wing positions.

Sherman and McNeil, each of whom toyed with the idea of entering the NBA Draft, return to give West Virginia a pair of explosive perimeter scorers. McNeil dropped 24 at Kansas, including 20 in the first half, and he tallied 23 in WVU's NCAA Tournament loss to Syracuse. He led the team with 69 3-point field goals and was fourth in scoring with an average of 12.2 points per game.

Sherman was third with a 13.4-points-per-game scoring average and is quite capable of increasing that total significantly in 2022. He produced a career-high 26 against national champion Baylor and had 21 double-figure scoring games in 2021.

Bridges, a 6-foot-7, 225-pound wing from nearby Fairmont, is another guy capable of filling it up from the perimeter.

"As soon as those guys see a crack, they're going to shoot it – and I want them to shoot it," Huggins said.

West Virginia probably doesn't have a traditional point guard this year. Senior Kedrian Johnson is returning, and the Mountaineers used McBride's scholarship to sign Old Dominion transfer Malik Curry, a second team All-Conference USA choice who averaged a team-best 15.7 points per game in 2021.

Both are more slasher types who put the ball on the floor with the intention of getting to the rim. Curry is also lefthanded, which may help him some scoring close to the basket. The question is will he be able to consistently do that in the Big 12?

"Playing at Old Dominion is a whole lot different than the people we line up and play on a daily basis," Huggins admitted. "He's got really good footspeed, and he's shooting it better than he shot it when he first got here."

Huggins recruited two solid high school guards out of Ohio in 6-foot-3 Kobe Johnson from Canton McKinley High, the Buckeye State's Division I Player of the Year, and 6-foot-1 Seth Wilson from Lorain High.

According to Huggins, Wilson is much better off the ball right now, while Johnson is much stronger with the ball than he anticipated.

"He may have as good of ball security as anyone on our team, and he passes it well," Huggins said of Johnson. "His body build (210 pounds) and the physicality he can bring to the guard position is far and away the best we have from the guards in terms of being physical and strong with the ball."

Other guys on this year's 15-man roster looking to get into the mix are 6-foot-7 sophomore forward Taj Thweatt and 6-foot-7 true freshman forward Jamel King from Paul Bryant High in Uniontown, Alabama.

Ask Huggins to give you his top eight or top 10 players and he has no clue.

Taz Sherman

"I couldn't pick them out right now," he admitted. "We have a lot of guys. The last time I had 15 (scholarship players) I was at Walsh College. Obviously, guys are going to want to play, and I don't think we will have attitude problems because these are good guys, but we will have guys sitting there wanting to get into the game."

Huggins' No. 1 concern from today until the season opener against Oakland on Nov. 9 will be identifying a reliable scorer close to the basket.

"We just don't have a big, strong guy right now who we can throw the ball to close, but hopefully, we can spend enough time with them to get them to the point where we can score a little bit in there," Huggins explained. "They're going to be iso'd because (opponents) are not leaving Taz, they're not leaving Sean and they're not leaving J.B.

"It's going to be one-on-one down there."

West Virginia will have one closed scrimmage against another Division I program before facing Akron in the charity exhibition game at the WVU Coliseum on Friday, Oct. 29 to benefit the Norma Mae Huggins Cancer Research Endowment Fund.

Huggins said the Akron exhibition will be extremely beneficial to his younger players.

"I don't think half of our roster has played in front of the crowds that we're going to play in front of," he explained. "Hopefully these younger guys can get a taste of what's about to happen to them. That part of it is really good."

West Virginia's 2021-22 home slate also includes a couple of traditional Eastern rivals, Pitt and Connecticut.

"Having Pitt and Connecticut at home, those are two teams that we've played through the years and our fan base will relate to that very well," Huggins said. "That's the part that's kind of exciting. We get 14,000 in the old barn over there, and it's pretty hard to beat us."

Season tickets are now on sale and can be purchased through the Mountaineer Ticket Office by calling 1-800-WVU GAME or by logging on to WVUGAME.com.

Schedule

Players Mentioned

Jalen Bridges

Dimon Carrigan

Isaiah Cottrell

Derek Culver

Malik Curry

Kedrian Johnson

Kobe Johnson

Jamel King

Sean McNeil

Seny N'diaye

James Okonkwo

Gabe Osabuohien

Pauly Paulicap

Taz Sherman

Taj Thweatt

Seth Wilson

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