It came out on New Year’s Day that Oscar Tshiebwe was stepping away from WVU’s basketball program due to personal reasons. Coach Bob Huggins said that “he has our full support,” and they wish him the best at this time. Being a WVU basketball fan for as long as I have, this isn’t the first time that player has stepped away from the program. It sucks, but that is part of life. Sometimes people need breaks from their own lives, and no one can blame him for that.
This past Tuesday it came out that Tshiebwe had officially entered the NCAA Transfer Portal. Now, this doesn’t always mean that a player is leaving, but I don’t see a scenario where Big O comes back to play for the Mountaineers. Tshiebwe had a great start to his WVU career last year averaging 8.5 points and 7.8 rebounds along with getting Big 12 All-Newcomer honors, also snagging 2nd Team All Big 12 as a freshman. A lot of people expected that Big O would have an even better year this year, but that hasn’t been the case. Tshiebwe was only averaging 11 points and 9 rebounds for the Mountaineers this season, but if you were able to watch the games, you could tell that something was wrong.
He was found out of position on offense and defense more often than not, he got in foul trouble early and often, and there was a general unhappiness in the way he played. There could be a lot of reasons that a player would want to leave a school: maybe they want a bigger role, maybe they and the coach don’t get along well, maybe they see greener grass at a different school or conference. I’m not here to speculate, it would be foolish to. I do want to wish Tshiebwe the best of luck in his future endeavors. I hope he finds what he’s looking for.
What does that mean for the WVU program? We’ll have to wait and see. I certainly think this will give Derek Culver more room to operate in the paint, and it gives other players like Taz Sherman more of a scoring opportunity as we saw in the gutsy win against Oklahoma State. I think that we will feel Big O’s missing presence on the boards more than anything else, but we will have to wait and see how the rest of this season will shake out.
Round The Game 
Leave a comment