West Virginia reloading to surpass hoops expectations

Given all the turmoil and upheaval that has come crashing into the West Virginia basketball program this off-season in waves, the Mountaineers are now solidly coming out on the other side.

Since the resignation of head coach Bob Huggins and the appointment of Josh Eilert into an interim role for this coming season in late June the roster has stabilized.

First, the program was able to convince most on the roster to remain especially those high-level incoming transfers including center Jesse Edwards, point guard Kerr Kriisa, guard RaeQuan Battle and guard Omar Silverio. That doesn’t even include the others that elected to remain to round things out.

And even that was dicey at one stage as Kriisa was in the portal at one time and it was no sure thing that the rest of the group would remain given all that had unfolded.

At one point, five different players were in the transfer portal and while four of those would eventually exit to different schools West Virginia was able to keep senior guard Jose Perez. That’s a key retainment for the Mountaineers for obvious reasons given Perez’s experience as well as his production during his time at Manhattan where he averaged almost 19 points per game.

The coaching staff also has been able to add two incoming transfers in Florida State point guard Jeremiah Bembry and St. John’s forward Quinn Slazinski to help replace the departures of Joe Toussaint and Tre Mitchell. Those won’t be direct replacements, but both bring similar skill sets to the table with perhaps a trade off in experience for versatility in the case of Bembry.

Currently the program now sits with 11 scholarship players with more work being done to complete the roster construction, but some national media members are weighing in on where the roster stands.

Jon Rothstein, of CBS Sports, lists the Mountaineers at the nine spot in the league in his pre-season power rankings for the Big 12. That situates West Virginia behind Kansas, Houston, Texas, Baylor, TCU, Kansas State, Texas Tech and Iowa State in order.

Some of those certainly can’t be argued especially considering that the Mountaineers have lost several key pieces from the roster with experience such as Mitchell and Toussaint. Teams like Kansas, Houston, Texas and Baylor were likely going to be ahead or right around where the program was slotted even before changes occurred to the roster or coaching staff.

There is also the factor of a first-time head coach in Eilert going through the meat grinder that is the Big 12 Conference that could potentially generate some movement. Eilert is ready for the position, but Huggins was a coaching legend so that could play a small role in where the program is situated.

Granted this is not a finished product by any means as West Virginia is still working on the construction of the roster, but the slot is interesting considering how much of the team was kept intact.

Another interesting item is the fact that Rothstein notes that Battle needs a waiver, which has him outside the current starting lineup in his projection of Kriisa, Seth Wilson, Perez, Slazinski and Edwards. So, it will be interesting to see how much that could change things as well once that does occur.

There’s going to be back and forth on any list or projection from one person, but it’s interesting that at this stage of the off-season the Mountaineers are being picked more toward the bottom half given the talent on this team. This roster certainly is better than that and has the chance to get even better.

Now, it’s up to the coaching staff and players to prove it.

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