[UPDATE, 4/7, 8:30 p.m.: DJ Thomas will enter the transfer portal, according to Sam Kayser of League Ready. Thomas was originally committed to play for Ross Hodge at North Texas and followed him to WVU. He would have been the Mountaineers’ leading returning scorer next season after averaging 6.6 points per game on almost 50 percent shooting as a freshman.]
West Virginia concluded an up-and-down 2025-26 campaign in memorable fashion Sunday night, rallying down the stretch in regulation to force overtime before going on to an 89-82 victory against Oklahoma in the College Basketball Crown (CBC) Championship in Las Vegas.
It finished off a stretch of three wins in four days for WVU, which went more than three weeks without a game between its 68-48 loss to BYU in the Big 12 Conference Tournament back on March 11 and an 82-77 overtime win against Stanford last Thursday to qualify for a CBC semifinal.
“If you get a chance to win the last game of the year, it’s special and we all will remember this forever,” coach Ross Hodge said. “It’s not the ultimate goal as a program or university, but it sets a great standard and expectation moving forward.”
Still, 28 hours after the triumph over the Sooners wrapped up a 21-14 season, it was time to squarely turn the page to what lies ahead.
The Transfer Portal opened today — coincidentally enough at the same time ‘One Shining Moment’ aired to put an end to this season moments after Michigan claimed the National Championship — and will remain open through April 21.
That West Virginia is losing its entire starting five and sixth man Chance Moore means the Mountaineers will need to again be especially active in adding to their roster.
“Obviously you’re going to lean heavy into the portal, because you’re losing some experienced players,” Hodge said last week before his team traveled west. “It starts there. I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of adding another high school player to the mix, in particular if you felt like they could play minutes right away. But it’ll be heavy portal. You know the positions we’re losing and you have to replace them.”
All but three of the Mountaineers’ 89 points against Oklahoma came from players now out of eligibility, including 38 from guard Honor Huff — the highest-single game total for a WVU player in 17 years. Da’Sean Butler’s 43 in a February 2009 game against Villanova is the only instance of a Mountaineer scoring more than 38 points since Lowes Moore totaled 40 in 1978 against Notre Dame.
While DJ Thomas showed plenty of promise in his freshman season and finished the CBC with 31 points, all but three came in victories against Stanford and Creighton, including a 20-point outing in the matchup with the Blue Jays.
Among players with an opportunity to return, Thomas was the most productive one, while fellow freshman guard Amir Jenkins played an average of 16 minutes across 32 games, but did not travel to Las Vegas as a result of the first of two labrum surgeries last week. Jenkins will likely be out for most, if not all, of the offseason, and his status moving forward figures to play a pivotal role in the direction the Mountaineers take over the offseason.
“You start with simply acknowledging that you would like for them to be back. From there, everybody is a little different,” Hodge said. “You want to be respectful and honor everyone else’s processes. Some people are like let’s get through the season and some are more open to be actively engaged in conversations. It’s a wide variety.
“But the first step for me is communicating that I’d like for you to be back. In the time period we’re in, it’s not always that simple, but that’s usually a good starting point. I don’t even think you can necessarily read into anything if people don’t come back anymore. Sometimes it’s not even a negative experience and the coach didn’t have a negative experience with the player, and the player didn’t have a negative experience with the program or university. But there’s not an infinite amount of resources at everyone’s disposal. That’s just kind of the world we’re in.”
Backcourt help is on the way in the form of incoming freshmen Kingston Whitty and Miles Sadler, the latter of whom is considered one of the more heralded recruits in program history.
“You have to balance experience with some youth, and obviously we will have some youth and some youth that we anticipate having big roles,” Hodge said. “You’re definitely going to want to mix in some experience with that, kind of along the same process with guys that fit the same mold. Guys that want to be parts of teams, that want to represent the university, want to represent the state and do it in a manner that everyone can be proud of on and off the floor.”
In addition to Huff, point guard Jasper Floyd, guard Treysen Eaglestaff, forward Brenen Lorient and center Harlan Obioha concluded their collegiate careers Sunday. So, too, did Moore, who finished the CBC with 37 points on 16-for-24 shooting and generally added another element to the team’s offense through his ability to penetrate.
All told, those six players led the squad in minutes, while Huff, Lorient and Moore finished as double-figure scorers and were directly followed by Eaglestaff and Floyd, who averaged 9.8 and seven points, respectively.
Forward Jackson Fields was a contributor across the nine games he played in, but needs approved for a medical waiver to gain an additional year of eligibility.
“As soon as the season is over now, you’re right into the transfer portal and kind of reconstructing your roster all over again,” Hodge said. “You don’t really have a time to kind of sit back and reflect on the good and bad and where we are. That time typically comes a little deeper into the summer now. You used to play a season, everybody goes to their neutral corners for a little bit, you get away from your players, they get away from you and you actually realize man, we do like each other. Then you start your offseason workouts. Now, because of the nature of this thing, you really get no time in that regard.”