Isaiah Cottrell, Jalen Bridges Seeing Major Interest in Transfer Portal
It was inevitable that changes would be made to the WVU basketball roster heading into next season following a year in which the Mountaineers missed out not only on the NCAA Tournament, but the NIT as well.
However, the decisions of Isaiah Cottrell and Jalen Bridges to transfer came as a little bit of a surprise, especially Bridges, a Fairmont native. A big part of Cottrell's struggles this season are due to still battling back from an Achilles injury that ended his true freshman season a year ago. Coming back from that is extremely difficult and some players are never able to fully get back to where they were before the injury happened. He had a tough time matching up with other bigs in the paint and on the boards.
As for Bridges, he never developed into that third scorer that everyone thought of him becoming. He didn't shoot the ball as well this season shooting nearly seven percentage points less from the field and eight percentage points less from three.
Despite having a down year, both Cottrell and Bridges are receiving interest from a number of schools, including a few that have interest in both.
According to Travis Branham of 247Sports, Bridges has heard from Arkansas, Wake Forest, Ohio State, NC State, Texas A&M, Michigan State, Kansas State, DePaul, Oklahoma State, Penn State, Pitt, Minnesota, South Florida, San Diego State and Loyola-Chicago.
Ethan Bock of WVSportsNow reports that Cottrell has heard from Arizona State, Arkansas, Butler, BYU, Loyola Chicago, Loyola Marymount, Montana, Ole Miss, Penn State, Seton Hall, Southern Illinois, St. John’s, Texas Tech, Utah, and UNLV.
The schools that are recruiting each of them are Arkansas, Loyola-Chicago, and Penn State.
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