WVU basketball: Brandon Knapper might be able to help

The WVU basketball team may need some fresh air. Some kind of fire needs breathed into this squad to give them a boost for the rest of the season.

That boost may arrive in the form of Brandon Knapper. The once healed recruit may have slipped the minds of most WVU basketball fans. He was an in-state prospect and looked like he could become one of the best players to emerge out of the state of West Virginia.

Coming out of South Charleston High School, Knapper ended up at Hargrave Military Academy for a year before enrolling at West Virginia. He has been a student at WVU for a while now, just not a regular for the WVU basketball team.

That may soon change. Knapper was injured in the offseason and was said he could be out for the entire 2017-18 season. Well, the calendar has turned and there may be a need for Knapper on the court. According to the Gazette Mail, Knapper had meniscus surgery in September. These last few months, he has been resting and rehabilitating. Huggins did confirm in October that Knapper would be out for the entire season.

Keenan Cummings recently tweeted that head coach Bob Huggins said Knapper is now healthy. So, he appears to be ready to go for game action.

So, at this point, it’s not a matter of holding out Knapper to keep him healthy. Huggins is thinking about the best way to utilize his lineup. There are a lot of questions weighing on Huggins’ mind as he figures out how to fix the many problems that are currently plaguing the WVU basketball team.

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Knapper should be able to help right away on offense. What is unsure, though, is how he will adjust right away to the speed of Big 12 basketball. He may not be ready for this next step after never really Division I collegiate game action.

What Knapper does bring to the table is a fearless ability to drive the lane and score inside. His outside shooting can improve, but what the WVU basketball team needs is a reliable go-to scorer and that could be Knapper at this point.

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West Virginia does have a lot of bodies right now and Huggins does a good job of finding the best rotation. With Teddy Allen and Esa Ahmad underperforming right now, Knapper might be worth a second look for the rest of the season.