Published: December 14, 2008 10:36 pm      

Thoroughman resident tough guy for WVU

MORGANTOWN — If you happen to be walking past the Coliseum any time in the near future and hear a loud crash, don’t bother calling 9-1-1.

It probably isn’t that snazzy, new scoreboard falling onto the court and it probably isn’t a couple of cars running into each other.

Most likely it’s nothing more than Cam Thoroughman out on the basketball court.

Thoroughman, the West Virginia sophomore forward from Portsmouth, Ohio, turns a basketball game into a demolition derby. He is to basketball what Owen Schmitt was to football, always a collision waiting to happen.

West Virginia’s colors may be blue and old gold but Thoroughman’s colors are black and blue and old gold. He wears bruises the way Gen. MacArthur used to wear medals.

It isn’t that he means it that way. He’d rather be as smooth as Devin Ebanks, as agile as Wellington Smith.

But that isn’t him.

He’d never win American Idol, but he might win a bar-room brawl.

Certainly it was no surprise that he was in the midst of last summer’s little to-do up in PNC Park which proved to be much ado about nothing. It’s just fate, the way he plays, the way he lives.

None of us knew much about Thoroughman until last March. He had played only 83 minutes all season until the Mountaineers found themselves facing Duke in the NCAA’s second round.

Bob Huggins needed to find someone who would go in there and rattle the Dukies cage and Thoroughman was the man.

“That,” he admitted wearing a bright smile, “was my best moment.”

He scored four points and grabbed four rebounds in nine minutes of play, leaving some Duke bodies in his wake. Between him and his running mate Joe Mazzulla, the Blue Devils never knew what hit them and WVU marched into the Sweet 16.

The way Thoroughman’s career has worked out, he’s become a role player because things really didn’t go the way he expected them to when John Beilein recruited him.

His first season was a redshirt year and his second season was a struggle, trying to play with a painful knee injury.

Again, this is what Cam Thoroughman is.

No pain, no gain.

Playing against Pitt, the knee cap popped out of place.

I’m going to repeat that, so if you happen to be squeamish, perhaps you should not read on.

The knee cap popped out of place.

Then it did it again. And again. And again.

If Thoroughman said it was painful, you know it had to be.

He kept going though, spending three hours a day in the training room, taking Ibuprofen.

“It was like walking on eggshells,” is the way he described it.

It’s still not perfect. He wears a brace. He needs treatment.

“I wasn’t the same player when I came back,” he admitted. “I don’t do things the way I used to.”

For example, he jumps off only one leg now, won’t risk pushing off the other one.

“Some days are better than others,” he said.

The best days are the days when he gets to play more. He just doesn’t know when that will be.

“It all depends on the matchup coach wants,” he explained.

He’d like to play more, working hard to improve on his shortcomings.

“I’m working on my jump shot every day,” he said. “My jump shot is what stands between me and major minutes.”

With the injuries lately to Mazzulla and Alex Ruoff, Huggins rotation is all screwed up and he’s been playing people out of position, opening up some playing time for Thoroughman, and he’s been making his presence felt — literally.

When they say he’s on the floor, they mean he’s on the floor … diving for a ball. He’s a contact magnet.

Duquesne found about out it Saturday night when the Mountaineers won the battle of muscle to win a game on the road. They looked as though they had no way to win and Thoroughman had a part of it, unartistic as it may have been.

With Da’Sean Butler nursing a broken shot and three fouls on the bench, Thoroughman got to play 20 minutes.

You won’t find any points by his name, although how some of the tangles he got into trying to go up for shots were called fouls is unbelievable. What you find next to his name is four rebounds — three of them offensive.

Offensive rebounds are what WVU is living on now, so much so that Duquesne coach Ron Everhart took one look at the stat sheet after the game and noted 26 offensive rebounds for the Mountaineers (to go with 27 defensive) and remarked: “I don’t think I’ve ever seen that on a stat sheet before.”

The thing is, Thoroughman comes in and doesn’t hurt the Mountaineers when he gives them minutes. In fact, the only pain he inflicts is on the opposition.

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