2024-05-03 04:04:31
Oklahoma State guard Javon Small handles the ball during a college men’s basketball game last season. (Photo provided)
MORGANTOWN — Unless you’ve been moose hunting in Montana for the past few years, you may have noticed a dramatic change in college basketball.
The X’s and O’s were once the most important items in the game, but they have been replaced by the $s of NIL money and the hardest working, most important person in the basketball office is no longer the coach, but rather the coordinator of recruiting.
Recruiting has become the name of the game…a year-round pursuit where you are most likely rebuilding your roster on an annual basis.
The point was driven home last year in West Virginia when the Mountaineers parted ways with coach Bob Huggins and had to rebuild their roster twice in one season while trying to negotiate their way through injuries and suspensions that turned the season into a Abbott has changed. and Costello routine of slapstick basketball.
Now they have a new coach in Drake’s successful mid-major leader Darian DeVries and he has started completely over, with only one returning player, Ofri Naveh, a late addition from Israel and with the transfer portal having just closed, he and DeVries a way to add some important parts.
It turned out for one of those parts that he only had to look across the dinner table to bring in his son, Tucker, who averaged 21.6 points per game for his father at Drake last year and a career average of 18, 0 transfers with one year to play.
That took care of the goalkeeper, but who would get him the ball?
Problem solved this week with the addition of Javon Small, a capable point guard from Oklahoma State to spread the ball around. It was such a big addition that WVU jumped its recruiting class out of the gate to No. 5 in the country with plenty of work to do.
But a roster is taking shape and Small is a big part of it.
Last season, West Virginia faced Oklahoma State and Small just once, which probably wasn’t a schedule gift to the Mountaineers, as the Cowboys finished tied for last in the Big 12 with ‘ an identical conference record of 4-14.
However, the tiebreaker went to the Cowboys as they won that lone game played in Stillwater once morest WVU 70-66, and it was Small who made the difference in the game. Small’s borderline classic, he scored 15 points on 5-of-6 shooting from the floor, 2-of-3 from 3-point range, while adding an expected 7 assists since he’s a point guard.
But 12 rebounds too.
That in itself would tend to create euphoria among the Mountaineer faithful, but one would expect DeVries to have studied more than just that game film.
See, the reality is that there was no defense for the way West Virginia played defense last season.
The Mountaineers ranked 303rd in the nation in points allowed, giving up 76.8 per game, including 81 or more in the last five games and 90 or more in four of those last five games.
Individual players feasted on openings on defense, either from outside the 3-point line or inside the paint.
Seven different players scored 29 or more points once morest West Virginia and it was kicked off in the Big 12 Tournament once morest Cincinnati when Day Day Thomas had 29 and Simas Lukosius had 31 in the same game.
So it’s best not to expect 25 points a night from Small when he wears the WVU jersey, but know that he can and has led Oklahoma State with 15.9 points per game this season.
More importantly, though, Small is known as a solid defender, something the man he’s replacing, Kerr Kriisa, mightn’t claim and they’ll find out in Kentucky, where he signed for his final season of play.
Small may not be like the second coming of Jevon Carter, but he can get the job done and as a point guard, he is smart and smart at his job.
He hails from basketball territory in Indiana. He was in South Bend until he was a high school sophomore and then moved to Indianapolis. Indiana produced both Oscar Robertson and Larry Bird, so he understands what the sport means in the state.
“He’s very, very cerebral,” Oklahoma State’s Mike Boynton told the Oklahoman last season in a profile of their point guard. “He wants to lead. He wants his teammates to learn as much as possible from him.”
And, Boynton said, he has a lot they can learn from him.
“You look at his assist-to-turnover ratio for his career, it’s always been pretty good. (After two years at East Carolina and a year at Oklahoma State, he has 244 assists and 167 turnovers),” Boynton said.
“Always shot a pretty good percentage, mostly because he takes good shots,” he continued, the numbers show him shooting 41.4% from the floor and 34.7% from 3.
“He plays with a great sense of pride that his team is successful, and those are the hallmarks of a very good point guard, and a lot of kids from that state as well.
“If you’re talking regarding basketball that means something in a state — like Texas, football is king — in Indiana, basketball is king,” Boynton told the Oklahoman. “There’s an element of having guys from there who learned that basketball is very important and when you play, you play a certain way. You don’t turn the ball over, you take good shots, be a good teammate. And all those things are still true.
“It’s a basketball state,” Small said. “You just don’t have a lot of cameras like other states like North Carolina or California. But in my opinion, most of the best hoopers come from Indiana.”
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