Monday, January 24, 2011

Casey Mitchell suspended indefinitely

A day after Danny Jennings left the West Virginia bench during a 56-46 win over South Florida, the Mountaineers sent out a press release saying that leading scorer Casey Mitchell has been suspended indefinitely.

The reason for the suspension that was given was the dreaded violation of team rules. For Mitchell, who leads the team in scoring at 16.6 ppg, it is the second time that he has been suspended during the school year. He was also suspended -- again, for violating team rules -- back in October, although he didn't miss any game time.

The Mountaineers now have just eight scholarship players on the roster, assuming that Jennings is actually gone from the team. (I saw a few tweets that mentioned it, but have come up with zilch for a link.) Their freshmen class has completely disintegrated and of the players left on the team, Joe Mazzulla, Truck Bryant, and Cam Thoroughman have all faced suspensions in the last two years while Johnnie West nearly left the team over the summer.

With Big East play now in full swing, the Mountaineers could be in trouble.

UPDATE: Jeff Eisenberg of the Dagger passed this link my way after I originally posted the story. Huggy Bear basically confirms that Jennings is done:

"It's unfathomable to me that somebody would leave their team at halftime," Huggins said. "I just can't imagine that anyone would do that. You play for the name on the front, not the name on the back. I can't understand it and I hope I never understand it. If I understand it then I'm probably as bad off. I just don't know what would possess somebody to do that."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

No good basketball players. Is anybody really surprised?