MORGANTOWN —
West Virginia basketball coach Bob Huggins, with a Final Four appearance as bait, landed another high-profile recruit when he signed Houston, Tex., native Darrious Curry to a grant-in-aid.
Curry originally committed to Texas-El Paso but when coach Tony Barbee, who had recruited him, took the job at Auburn and was replaced by Tim Floyd, Curry asked for and was granted a release from the grant-in-aid he signed during the early signing period.
Curry’s signing was crucial for Huggins, who lost two pretty good forwards this year in Da’Sean Butler and Devin Ebanks.
“Darrious fills a void that we have at small forward with the losses of Da’Sean (Butler) and Devin (Ebanks),” Huggins said in a release from the school. “We lost all of our size on the wing and our size is critical to our success. We wanted to add more size to our perimeter.”
A left-hander, Curry is a 6-foot-7, 200-pound forward from Stratford High in Houston, where he averaged 19 points, seven rebounds and two assists per game as a senior for coach Mitch Hornsby. He was a McDonald’s All-America finalist and earned first team all-District 18-5A honors for three consecutive years. Curry had 32 points against Hastings High and 30 points against Elsik High this past season.
As a senior he transferred to Stratford from Elsik, where he played the three previous years. He averaged 10 points a game as a freshman, 20 as a sophomore and 15 as a junior. He also ran track at Elsik, winning the high jump and triple jump in the district meet.
“West Virginia could not have gotten a better kid in Darrious Curry,” Hornsby was quoted as saying in the release. “He is really athletic and a great leader. Darrious is a quality person on top of being a really good player.”
Curry joins Noah Cottrill of Logan High and David Nyarsuk from Mountain State Academy in Beckley, as signees for the 2010-11 season. Nyarsuk is a native of Juba, Sudan.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
