The Javon Small addition is huge for WVU

Recruiting has become the name of the game ... a year-round endeavor in which you quite likely are remaking your roster on a yearly basis.

The point was driven home in West Virginia last year when the Mountaineers parted company with coach Bob Huggins and had to rebuild their roster twice in one season, while they had to try to negotiate their way through injuries and suspensions that turned the season into an Abbott and Costello routine of slapstick basketball.

Now they have a new coach in Drake’s successful mid-major leader Darian DeVries and he 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 have found a way to add some important parts.

Turned out for one of those parts 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 carries an 18.0 career average with one year left to play.

That took care of the scoring guard, but who would get him the ball?

Problem solved this week with the addition of Javon Small, a skilled point guard from Oklahoma State to distribute the ball. It was such a big addition that WVU jumped its recruiting class out of the portal to No. 5 in the nation with still a lot of work to do.

But a roster is taking shape and Small is a big part of it.

Last season, West Virginia only faced Oklahoma State and Small once, which was probably not a scheduling gift to the Mountaineers as the Cowboys finished tied for last place in the Big 12 with an identical 4-14 conference record.

The tiebreaker went to the Cowboys, however, as they won that lone game played in Stillwater against WVU, 70-66, and it was Small who made the difference in the game. Small’s bordered upon classic ash, 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 as he is a point guard.

But 12 rebounds, too.

This, in and of itself, would tend to create euphoria among the Mountaineer faithful, but one would expect that DeVries 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 final five games.

Individual players feasted on openings in the defense, be it from outside the 3-point line or inside the paint.

Seven different players scored 29 or more points against West Virginia and it was capped off in the Big 12 Tournament loss to Cincinnati when Day Day Thomas had 29 and Simas Lukosius 31 in the same game.

So it is best that you not expect 25 points a night from Small when he wears the WVU jersey but know that he can score and led Oklahoma State with 15.9 points a game this season.

More important, though, is that Small is known as a solid defender, something the man he replaces, Kerr Kriisa, could not claim and that they will find out in Kentucky, where he has signed for his final season of play.

Small may not be like the second coming of Jevon Carter, but he can do the job and as a point guard, he is smart and crafty at his task.

He comes out of 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 Mike Boynton told the Oklahoman last season in a profile of their point guard. “He wants to lead. He wants his teammates to learn from him as much as possible.”

And, Boynton said, he has much they can learn from him.

“You look at his assist-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 figures showing him shooting 41.4% from the floor and 34.7% from 3.

“He plays with a great sense of pride in having his team be successful, and those are earmarks of a really good point guard, and also a lot of kids from that state.

“When you talk about basketball meaning something in a state — like Texas, football is king — in Indiana, basketball is king,” Boynton told the Oklahoman. “There’s an element to having guys from there that learned that basketball’s really important and if 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 still ring true.

“It’s a basketball state,” Small said. “You just don’t have a lot of cameras around like other states like North Carolina or California. But in my opinion, most of the best hoopers come out of Indiana.”