It seems clear at this point that West Virginia is going to use the transfer portal to help fill out some of the holes on the roster heading into next season.
The portal officially opened Dec. 4 and will stay that way Jan. 3. It’s important to note that timeframe is just for players to enter the transfer portal but recruiting and visits can go on long after that once the first part of the equation and entering into the database is indeed completed.
The key over the next several weeks will be to fill as many of those gaps on the roster as possible before the Jan. 12 deadline to enroll for the spring semester.
Getting into school by that point would allow any of the incoming transfers that do pick the Mountaineers to participate in spring football, although as we’ve seen in the past that isn’t necessarily a necessity with all the movement.
So, what are the goals before we get to that stage? First is the fact that West Virginia simply needs to ensure that the key players on the roster that they want to retain are indeed retained. It sounds simple enough but with so many options available to players, finding a way to keep the core of the roster together has become quite the undertaking for college programs.
That’s where collectives like the Country Roads Trust, which has seen its membership grow in recent days, come into play with an organized effort to retain student athletes.
After that is checked off the list, the focus shifts toward targeting those key needs that remain. For West Virginia, the obvious two are at defensive back and wide receiver. Out of the 16 known scholarship offers out to transfer portal players so far, 10 of them are in the defensive secondary and four at receiver but those won’t be the only positions targeted by the coaching staff. Additionally, West Virginia has offered one tight end and one linebacker.
Related: Known West Virginia offers in the transfer portal
The Mountaineers will also look at linebackers, offensive linemen and defensive linemen for example and the door is open for other positions as well with some wiggle room with scholarships available.
West Virginia has the added bonus this year of carrying some real momentum into the off-season as well and while that won’t procure transfers alone, it certainly doesn’t hurt matters either. The coaching staff has already received word that they will be returning next fall and on the back of an eight-win season they can sell that they are only a few pieces away from making an even bigger leap next fall.
The Mountaineers could return a bulk of their overall production which makes it a potential attractive option for transfers looking to be that missing ingredient at key places on the roster.
That’s especially true in a Big 12 that will be undergoing change with two of the top three teams from this past season out of the picture and moving to a 16-team model with the four Pac-12 schools.
It’s transfer portal season which means that plenty of movement and surprises are ahead, but for West Virginia the hope is that most of it falls on the positive side of the divide this time around.
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