Published: November 08, 2009 11:52 pm      

Kilicli shows skills in exhibition

WVU men roll past Mountain State, 104-82

MORGANTOWN — Somehow, somewhere, someday somebody is going to get through to the NCAA.

Maybe then college sports will be what it should be.

See, West Virginia has a first-year player, a recruit named Deniz Kilicli, big, muscular, rawboned kid from Istanbul, which last time anyone looked was in Turkey.

Bob Huggins, the West Virginia coach who recruited him out of Mountain State Academy in Beckley, believes he has himself a gem, a kid who he says “potentially is a first-team All-Big East talent.”

That, however, will not be this year because the NCAA says he must sit out the season’s first 20 games, meaning he won’t be eligible to play until the Pitt game in early February. Until then he can only take part in the Mountaineers’ two exhibition games, the first of which came Sunday, a 104-82 victory over Mountain State University.

Kilicli showed some of the stuff that Huggins says he will show as he becomes more accustomed to America and American basketball, scoring eight points on 4 for 6 shooting, grabbing six rebounds, registering a pair of assists, blocking two shots and making a steal.

True, it wasn’t the kind of numbers that Devin Ebanks, Casey Mitchell and Kevin Jones put up as they scored 19, 19 and 21, respectively, Ebanks and Jones with 10 rebounds. Da’Sean Butler put up 10 points with nine assists and nine rebounds, almost registering a triple double.

Now you may be wondering what sin Kilicli committed for the NCAA to banish him for 20 games — more than half a season. Certainly, it had to be worse than Louisville Coach Rick Pitino’s transgressions in a restaurant that led to an extortion attempt but no NCAA penalty or Kentucky recruit John Wall’s two-game penalty for taking money from an agent.

Well, not exactly.

See Kilicli played with a professional on a city team, there being no high school team available to play on.

Now, he wasn’t the professional, the one taking money. In fact, he didn’t even know the player was a professional or, for that matter, that playing with a professional was against the rules.

“I have to believe the NCAA rule book is not required reading in Turkey,” Huggins would say. “It surely isn’t on the best seller list there.”

In truth, a 16 or 17-year-old kid like Kilicli isn’t even sure he’s coming to the United States to play.

For example, a prep school coach who is a friend of Huggins tipped him off that a talented player from Turkey was coming to the U.S. and that he should look into recruiting him. That player was not Kilicli, but he never showed.

Instead, Kilicli did, wound up at Mountain State and Huggins fell in love with his size, his intelligence, his drive.

We might also add that he fell in love with his integrity, too, for while there are lot of people around the WVU program who believe the NCAA is being overzealous in its persecution of Kilicli, he is not among them.

“I didn’t know the rule,” he said after Sunday’s exhibition game. “No one in Europe knows the rule. But rules are rules.”

Surely, though, Kilicli thinks it’s unfair, right?

“No,” he said. “If something happens, it happens. It give me more time to practice and get better.”

The shame is that WVU figures to be battling for a Big East championship this season and could really use Kilicli down the stretch if he had game experience. Now Huggins has to find a way to keep him involved, work him hard, then hope he can work him in by the time the Big East Tournament comes around.

Considering how good this team looks now, going 10 deep, with scorers like Butler, Ebanks, junior college star Mitchell and Jones, with Truck Bryant and Joe Mazzulla running the point, and with Wellington Smith, John Flowers and Cam Thoroughman adding muscle off the bench and freshman guard Dalton Pepper a potential scorer coming off the bench, Kilicli will be a strong fit.

The son of the president of a manufacturing facility in Turkey, Kilicli did not speak English before coming to America, learning it in two months, mostly from watching television.

“He speaks better English than some of the guys I had playing for me from America in the past,” Huggins said.

NOTES: Point guard Joe Mazzulla, who missed most of last year with a shoulder injury, sat out the exhibition game with inflammation in the shoulder but Huggins said he could have played … Huggins does know he has to get Mazzulla going soon to rid him of some of the rust he acquired … Mountain State had a couple of big time scorers in Alvin Mitchell, who scored 33 points, and Nick Aldridge, who had 29 … They also boast the biggest basketball player ever in Englishman Paul Sturgess, who stands 7-feet, 8-inches. “I felt like a kid standing next to him,” Kilicli said. Kilicli stands 6-9 and came up to his shoulder. Sturgess played only four minutes and had one rebound.

E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.