The 2025 edition of the annual open-invitation national basketball league known as The Basketball Tournament is set to take place this July, and the West Virginia Mountaineers' alumni squad which participates annually -- known as Best Virginia -- is continuing to piece together their roster for the event.
Former Mountaineer stars Kedrian Johnson, Erik Stevenson, and Jermain Haley have already been announced for the roster, and they'll will be joined by another former Mountaineer star from the 2010s who has experience in previous editions of The Basketball Tournament.
Esa Ahmad was 1,000 point scorer during his time in Morgantown, and he played for the Mountaineers under legendary head coach Bob Huggins from 2015-2019, and was averaging a career-best 12 points per game as a senior before being dismissed from the program for violation ofathletic department policies in 2019.
Ahmad played for the Best Virginia organization in 2024, and has been playing professionally overseas in both Europe and South America since leaving the program at West Virginia. The former WVU forward talked to MetroNews last summer following a Best Virginia exhibition game about how grateful he was to return to action in front of the Mountaineer fans.
“It feels great playing in front of these fans,” Ahmad said. “They’re the best fans in the world. Playing in different countries and coming back here to play in front of them, there’s nothing like it.”
Ahmad spent last season with KVIS Pardubice in Czechia, averaging 11.5 points and 5.4 rebounds. The previous year, he managed a career-best 14.2 points per game playing in Germany with BBC Bayreuth.