MORGANTOWN — West Virginia University basketball coach Bob Huggins may have added the last piece to his national championship plan when he landed the 7-footer he has sought to play in the middle.
Huggins final scholarship for 2010-11 went to Sudanese native David Nyarsuk, a 7-1, 230-pound center who will attend WVU next season. He is currently playing at Mountain State Academy.
Huggins previously landed Logan point guard Noah Cottrill, who played at Mountain State last year.
It appears that Huggins now has a “farm system” developing at Mountain State, where his former player, Rodney Crawford, is coach.
“We’re excited about David’s ability to be a game changer at the defensive end of the floor,” Huggins said. “His ability to change shots around the basket, as well as run the floor, will fit well into what we do at both ends of the floor. David is an extremely hard worker, which is what we have prided ourselves on.”
WVU graduates two seniors after this season — forward Da’Sean Butler and Wellington Smith — and it is thought the Mountaineers might lose Devin Ebanks, currently not with the team due to “personal issues,” to the NBA after the season.
If Ebanks were to return, Huggins would have a spectacular front line with Ebanks, Kevin Jones, John Flowers, freshmen Danny Jennings and Deniz Kilicli and incoming freshman Nyarsuk, who has been in the country only two years but has proven himself to be a solid student as well as player.
WVU would have Truck Bryant, Joe Mazzulla and Noah Cottrill to play the point next year with Casey Mitchell, Jonnie West and Dalton Pepper back as shooting guards.
o o o o o o
Award winners for the Cincinnati football game: Offensive champion: quarterback Jarrett Brown, wide receiver Bradley Starks, fullback Ryan Clarke; special teams champion: punter Scott Kozlowski; offensive scout champion: Chris Snook; defensive scout champion: Bobby Weston.
There was no defensive champion named.
o o o o o o
Redshirt senior Donnie Jones, wrestling at 165 pounds, got his final year off to a big start and young Cameron Gallaher got his career off to a big start over the weekend at Washington & Jefferson College Wrestling Open in Washington, Pa.
Jones took first place at 165 and was named the most outstanding wrestler as he begins a bid to follow brother Greg Jones, now an assistant coach at WVU, as a national champion. He won four matches.
So, too, did Gallaher, the Grafton native, who won the title by beating teammate Kyle Rooney, 4-1.
It still hasn’t been decided whether to redshirt Gallaher, a West Virginia state high school champion during an undefeated career, or to allow him to wrestle as a true freshman.
In all, five WVU wrestlers won titles at the event.
o o o o o o
WVU’s seventh-ranked cross-country team earned an at-large bid to participate in the NCAA championships next Monday at the Wabash Valley Family Sports Center in Terre Haute, Ind. The women’s race begins at 12:58 p.m.
WVU finished fourth in 2008 at the NCAAs and is coming off a third-place finish in the Mid-Atlantic Regional.
o o o o o o
Gov. Joe Manchin has named Charleston attorney Tom Flaherty to the WVU Board of Governors, replacing Steve Goodwin, who resigned last month.
Flaherty was the lead attorney in WVU’s case to collect the $4 million buyout from football coach Rich Rodriguez when he jumped to Michigan and attempted not to avoid paying the buyout.
This will do nothing to help Rodriguez should he ever attempt to come back to coach at West Virginia.
o o o o o o
Makenzie “Mak” Bristol, Amanda Carpenter, Marina Galente and Hope Sloanhoffer make up the 2009-10 recruiting class of WVU gymnastics coach Linda Burdette, a class she calls “one of the most experienced” she has ever recruited.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
Bob Herzel
Huggins adds big man to fold
- Bob Herzel
-
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: Patrone finally gets his due
Lee Patrone says he remembers it vividly, even though more than 50 years have passed, and while it was the greatest accomplishment in his life it has nothing to do with the West Virginia University basketball career that has lifted him into the Class of 2012 that will be inducted into the Mountaineer Sports Hall of Fame in September.
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: No doubt WVU made out well
There was a cold, ill wind blowing in from the north on Friday.
It was the kind of wind that blows whenever a Pitt man opens his mouth, as the Pittsburgh athletic director Steve Pederson did. -
Tears and memories: VIDEO
It was mid-Thursday afternoon at the Morgantown Event Center and the crowd stood mostly silently in line that wound out of the Events Hall and into the hallway toward the staircase.
A young lady was there holding a singular golden rose
“I wish,” Rebecca Durst said, “it could be gold and blue.” -
HERTZEL COLUMN: Stew fondly remembered by players
The tributes have poured in all week for Bill Stewart, the former West Virginia University football coach whose sudden and unexpected death from a heart attack at age 59 on Monday stunned the state, but it wasn’t the administrators or executives or politicians who really knew him.
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: White right there with Hall of Famers
Back on New Year’s Eve, 2008, shortly after West Virginia University had edged North Carolina, 31-30, to win the Meineke Car Care Bowl, an attempt was made to put Mountaineer quarterback Patrick White into his proper historical perspective.
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: Pat Beilein follows in father’s path
In a day filled with the sorrow of former West Virginia University football coach Bill Stewart’s sudden and unexpected death, there was a ray of sunshine that managed to slip through, a happening that shows us all that even in death there is life and as one son grieves, as does Stewart’s son, Blaine, somewhere else a father basks in pride over his son.
-
HERTZEL COLUMN - Stewart’s gift was giving
It was the kind of cosmic happening that defies description. We all come across them from time to time, leaving us in a state of disbelief.
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: This ‘Maniac’ makes music with Kilicli
Mike Martin wasn’t long removed from his New York roots, a somewhat rare import in these parts compared to the migration of New Jerseyites who matriculate at West Virginia University.
-
Van Zant fired as WVU baseball coach
West Virginia athletic director Oliver Luck believes with a new coach and a new stadium the Mountaineers can compete with the likes of Texas and Oklahoma for the Big 12 baseball championship but understands it will not come easily or quickly.
-
SEC, Big 12 team up for bowl
Even before the full impact of West Virginia University’s 2014 season-opening meeting with Alabama in Atlanta has been grasped, the opportunity presented itself for the two to meet again later in that season or future ones in a bowl agreement between the Big 12 and SEC that is much like the Rose Bowl agreement between the Big Ten and the Pac-12.
- More Bob Herzel Headlines
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: Patrone finally gets his due
