Three WVU Players Absent from College Basketball Crown Travel Roster

The West Virginia Mountaineers announced their travel roster for the College Basketball Crown on Tuesday morning, and three players who are on the team will not be making the trip out to Las Vegas — Amir Jenkins, Evans Barning Jr., and MJ Feenane.

Jenkins, we already knew about, as the freshman guard is set to undergo surgery here soon to repair a torn labrum in both of his shoulders.

"Probably the craziest part of the story is we knew about the left shoulder…so we’re at TCU, and he reaches in with his right shoulder and kind of subflexes it…it didn’t dislocate it, but just jarred it pretty good," Hodge said. "We knew we were going to have to get the left one taken care of, and after we got back from the conference tournament, we went ahead and had the MRI just to see what else was going on, and they were like, 'Why don’t we go ahead and MRI the right shoulder?' And sure enough, he had a torn labrum in his right shoulder. So he played through two labrum injuries and never said a word, never complained about it, never used it as an excuse, never allowed it to frustrate him.”

As for the other two, it won't impact Hodge's rotation or depth all that much, if at all. Barning is a true freshman who has not appeared in a game this season, and the same can be said for Feenane, who is considered a walk-on to the program. The reasons for their absences have not been publicized at this time.

Who West Virginia does have...

F Brenen Lorient
G Jasper Floyd
G Honor Huff
G Jayden Forsythe
F DJ Thomas
C Abraham Oyeadier
G Chance Moore
F Jackson Fields
G Niyol Hauet
G Morris Ugusuk
F Treysen Eaglestaff
C Harlan Obioha

Forsythe, a true freshman, has only played in a handful of games, Oyeadier has seen even more limited action, Fields has been injured, and Hauet has checked in a couple of times. So really, West Virginia has just seven regulars available, if you don't count Morris Ugusuk, who was used sparingly down the stretch. Hodge did mention during his press conference on Monday that Ugusuk will see an increased role with Jenkins out of the lineup.

The Mountaineers and the Stanford Cardinal will tip off their first-round matchup on Thursday, April 2nd, at 8 p.m. ET. You will be able to watch the game live on FS1.