West Virginia freshman forward Oscar Tshiebwe has submitted his paperwork to request an evaluation from the NBA Undergraduate Advisory Committee.

That doesn’t come as too much of a surprise considering the nature of college basketball which affords players the opportunity to request the grade and compete in pre-draft events while still maintaining college eligibility. But this year is going to present some very different hurdles for all involved.

That’s because while Tshiebwe will still receive his evaluation on where he could hypothetically stand in the NBA Draft from a pool of general managers, many of the critical feedback won’t be available. That’s because due to the COVID-19 pandemic all in-person workouts and the combine won’t be held.

Not having those events are significant blows to the process as NBA officials won’t be able to see them in real time to gather a sense on how prospects move, how they move their feet, their actual height and how fast they can get up and down the floor.

Basically, the bulk of the exploratory aspect to it all has been wiped out for the time being. That means largely no feedback on what areas they will need to improve to be effective at the next level making getting a grasp on where a player could be picked cloudier than ever before.

It effectively has eliminated the strength of the process for many prospects trying to get a feel for where they stand and what must improve if they want to potentially play in the NBA.

“We’ve never really had anybody go through what Oscar is going to go through because there is really nothing to go through,” head coach Bob Huggins said.

Huggins expects that replacing Tshiebwe is something that the program is not going to have to worry about because he has shown trust in the coaching staff and they’re not going to steer him wrong.

“I feel very confident that Oscar will make an intelligent decision as will Derek (Culver) if that’s the case with Derek. I haven’t heard anything that would indicate Derek has any interest,” Huggins said.

The Mountaineers have submitted that request for an evaluation but have yet to receive it back. The goal for Huggins as his coach is to ensure that Tshiebwe makes the best and most informed decision that he can make with the information that he will have available to him.

That has always been his focus but admittedly they’ve had some players in the past that have made choices that have cost them lucrative careers by listening to outside sources that put their best interest ahead of the player themselves.

“That’s always what we try to guard against,” Huggins said.

Tshiebwe is coming off an impressive freshman campaign where he started all 31 games while averaging 11.2 points and 9.3 rebounds per game and would be a true sophomore this fall.

But with so much uncertainty it forces the NBA teams into difficult decisions based off solely film alone.

“They’re like everybody else, everything is going to be left to film. I don’t think there is very many of them that are going to make a multi-million, multi-year deal off watching film,” Huggins said.

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