MORGANTOWN \u2014 Harlan Obioha\u2019s entire athletic career has been a contradiction of sorts.<\/p>\n
Maybe it begins with his nickname, \u201cBig Harlan,\u201d which, as the only 7-footer on the WVU men\u2019s basketball roster makes sense, but the big guy isn\u2019t as quite as big as he used to be.<\/p>\n
\u201cI came into college at 350 (pounds),\u201d Obioha said.<\/p>\n
That was back in 2021, when he enrolled at Niagara and redshirted his first season. There was another stop at UNC Wilmington, where Obioha \u2013 pronounced Obee-o-ha \u2013 helped the Seahawks reach the NCAA tournament last season by winning the Coastal Athletic Association tournament.<\/p>\n
By the time he accepted WVU coach Ross Hodge\u2019s sales pitch to join the Mountaineers this season \u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he came in at 305, somewhere around there,\u201d Hodge said. \u201cHe\u2019s at 265, 267 now.\u201d<\/p>\n
To that point, Obioha credits a great relationship with WVU strength and conditioning coach Jason Martinez.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur strength and conditioning coach, Jason Martinez, has been life changing for me,\u201d Obioha said. \u201cWe talk every day and every night before I go to bed. It\u2019s never been him getting on me, but just the conversations we have. That\u2019s been the biggest thing for me is my relationship with Jason.\u201d<\/p>\n
And then there is the scouting report on Obioha, both from the big man himself and from Hodge.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a really good passer,\u201d Hodge said. \u201cHonestly, we need for him to be a little more aggressive, because his first instinct is to pass. He really likes to pass. He\u2019ll pass out of the post, even when he\u2019s got really deep post position.\u201d<\/p>\n
Obioha also considers himself a pass-first kind of guy, which goes back to his days as a little kid watching his mother, Tabetha, play college basketball at Kansas Wesleyan. That was his first introduction to the sport that never quite let Obioha from its grasp.<\/p>\n
Now, that pass-first talk is fine, until you check out Obioha\u2019s stats from his senior season at Hoxie (Kan.) High School. He scored more than 1,000 points. Not in his entire prep career, but just in his senior season alone, when he averaged 28 points, 11 rebounds and four assists per game. He was named the state\u2019s Class AA Player of the Year.<\/p>\n
College offers did not pour in after that season. He did receive a Division I offer from Ole Miss to play both football and basketball, but Obioha decided basketball was his game and enrolled in a Colorado prep school for more seasoning.<\/p>\n
That extra year led him to Niagara.<\/p>\n
\u201cI came into college as a bruiser,\u201d Obioha said. \u201cI\u2019d go in there and give you 15 minutes of hard basketball, but nothing more than that.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not the case anymore and it\u2019s certainly not what Hodge is expecting at WVU.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere I think the weight loss helps him the most is being able to (play) for longer stretches,\u201d Hodge said. \u201cHe\u2019s light. He can move. He\u2019s just got to continue to get in cardio shape, where you can take that 18-20 minutes per game and extend that to 22 or 25 minutes per game.\u201d<\/p>\n
At UNC Wilmington last season, Obioha averaged 9.2 points and 6.0 rebounds per game. He grabbed nine rebounds in the 82-72 loss against Texas Tech in the first round of the NCAA tournament.<\/p>\n
Obioha expects bigger things in his final season. He\u2019s in better shape. Hodge raves about the big man\u2019s ability to move on the court and pass the ball in pick-and-roll situations.<\/p>\n
\u201cMe being an older guy now, I have to step into a leadership role,\u201d Obioha said. \u201cBeing an everyday guy is something we\u2019ve talked about a lot, just being there and being an energized guy and being a guy the younger guys can look up to.\u201d<\/p>\n
And he\u2019s being asked to score more, too, something Obioha admits takes getting used to, but he\u2019s making those adjustments.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomewhere along the lines, I just became a pass-first guy,\u201d Obioha said. \u201cThat really kind of translated into college. I really never thought anything of it until this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
The last thing to know about Obioha is also somewhat of a surprise. He loved basketball while growing up in Kansas, but was always more of a Wichita State and Kansas State fan.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot really K.U.,\u201d Obioha said of the Jayhawks, who WVU will host on Jan. 10. \u201cI\u2019ve had that game circled since I first got here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MORGANTOWN \u2014 Harlan Obioha\u2019s entire athletic career has been a contradiction of sorts. Maybe it begins with his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":232682,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[402,2939,94040,398,400,401,41323,99,41325],"class_list":["post-232681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-basketball","tag-basketball","tag-featured-sports","tag-harlan-obioha","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-basketball","tag-ncaabasketball","tag-ross-hodge","tag-sports","tag-wvu-mens-basketball"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232681\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}