MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (WV News) — Last year’s basketball season was one to forget and it appears that will be made easy to do as the early returns on new coach Darian DeVries are that it will be easy to do.
As guards Kobe Johnson, a starter on last year’s team, and redshirt freshman Jeremiah Bembry entered the transfer portal, DeVries took a big step toward rebuilding the backcourt with the signing of Emerson “KJ” Tenner to a national letter-of-intent for next season.
Tenner, who is a 6-foot guard from Memphis as he finishes his senior year at Cordova High School, was last year’s Mr. Basketball in Tennessee as he averaged 21 points a game. The Memphis Commercial Appeal recently named Tenner the 2024 Boys Basketball Player of the Year.
“We are elated to have KJ join our Mountaineer basketball program,” DeVries said in the school’s release of the signing. “He is the ultimate competitor who possesses incredible leadership qualities and cares a great deal about winning KJ has great feel and vision and doesn an outstnading job of making his teammates better.”
Tenner appears to be an exceptional talent. He averaged 28 points a game as a sophomore and followed that up as a junior averaging 23 a game.
He reached 1,000 career points after just 42 games, the fastest to reach that milestone in school history.
WVU now has four players on its roster — Tenner, fifth-year guard Noah Farrakhan, second-year guard Ofri Naveh, transfer Tucker DeVries, the coach’s son and last year’s Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Year.
Out of eligibility and gone are center Jesse Edwards, forward Akok Akok and guard RaeQuan Battle while forward Quinn Sluzinski would need to apply for a medical waiver to return. Gone via the transfer portal are Kobe Johnson, Bembry, Seth Wilson, Pat Suemnick, Kerr Kriisa and Josiah Harris.
Meanwhile, DeVries has began rebuilding his staff with an important hire of Chester Frazier, a longtime college assistant with experience in the ACC at Virginia Tech, Big 12 at Kansas State and Big Ten in his latest stop under Brad Underwood at Illinois.
He will serve as associate head coach with DeVries and be a key recruiter.
Frazier played at Illinois and was a two-time captain while twice earning Big Ten All-Defensive Team honors.
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