WVU basketball gets late addition
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia’s 2022-23 basketball debut, a 73-57 victory over Bowling Green in a charity exhibition game at the Coliseum, could be described with many adjectives.
Pretty is not one of them, and that’s just fine with coach Bob Huggins and his players, who will include an extra added attraction by Big 12 time in former Manhattan star Jose Perez, who averaged 18.9 points a game last year and this year was the MAAC Preseason Player of the Year.
Perez, who plays that New York style of basketball that Huggins loves, announced over the weekend that he is transferring to WVU following his coach’s dismissal a couple of weeks back and is awaiting a waiver on his eligibility.
His career has been a travelogue, starting at Gardner-Webb, moving on Marquette, then Manhattan and now on to WVU. The eligibility waiver should come with him being allowed to play his final collegiate season starting in the second semester, although he may have to play as a walk-on.
Rough, physical, strong, unrelenting, bullying … any of those adjectives are fine when used in describing Perez and the type of team WVU now seems to be. The Mountaineers believe they are out there to win a basketball game, not a beauty contest.
Perez will give WVU the one thing it seemed to be lacking … a go-to scorer.
It has been 20 years since the Mountaineers have had a 20-point a game scorer, that honor belonging to Drew Schifino, who averaged 20.1 in the 2002-03 season before being dismissed from the team midway through the next year following a dispute with then-coach John Beilein.
Kevin Jones, another New York product, came closest to averaging 20 a game, having finished the 2011-12 season with a 19.9 scoring average.
The likes of Da’Sean Butler, Deuce McBride, Kevin Pittsnogle, Alex Ruoff, Mike Gansey, Jevon Carter and Joe Alexander all were short of averaging 20.
Perez’s presence should give WVU a different look than it displayed in the exhibition game, being a player who can score in a variety of ways. His highlight tapes offer up views of a player who can hit from 3 but also of one who likes to work his way into the key where he has a variety of moves, many off-balance floaters, in which he finishes the play, finger-rolls and reverse layups.
He fits in perfectly on a roster of college basketball nomads that includes such transfers as Joe Toussaint, Erik Stevenson, Mo Wague, Emmitt Matthews Jr., Jimmy Bell III and Tre Mitchell.