MORGANTOWN - I can't help wondering who is going to interpret the first conversation between Turkey's Deniz Kilicli, the Sudan's David Nyarsuk, Brooklyn's Truck Bryant and Poca's Noah Cottrill when all four are presumably together on next year's West Virginia basketball team.

I would say fuggedaboudit, but can you imagine how that would translate into Kilicli's Turkish, Nyarsuk's French or Arabic (he speaks both) or Cottrill's (and anyone else who was raised here) West Virginian? Bryant's Brooklynese? Now that's a different story. And hey, if Jersey's Da'Sean Butler sticks around long enough to pass the torch, well, then certainly he could help.

Or maybe Joe Herber can come back. He spoke four languages when he arrived in Morgantown. Who knows how many he's picked up since then?

Not that this is unusual in college basketball these days. It's not. There has been a foreign influence in the game for decades. It's even been a hit-or-miss proposition at West Virginia.

Ah, where have you gone, Ales Chan? (Well, actually he's playing quite well for BK Prostejov in the Czech League, averaging 16 points. The guy who once fouled out of a game at Georgetown in - if I recall correctly - roughly eight minutes hasn't fouled out of a game this season).

Anyway, the topic here today, of course, is Nyarsuk, whose letter of intent arrived at West Virginia Wednesday. Is the 7-foot-1, 230-pound center more Chan or Hasheem Thabeet? Well, we'll have to wait and see. He averaged roughly 10 points, nine rebounds and three blocks last year at now-closed The Patterson School in North Carolina and is now at Beckley's Mountain State Academy, the same place Kilicli and Cottrill went last year.

Nyarsuk didn't have recruiters beating down his door with offers, but he generated plenty of curious looks from colleges, including Tennessee and Ohio State. Seven-footers tend to get looks. But to call him a project likely would not be unfair.

Then again, how many projects has Bob Huggins taken on and succeeded in turning into players?

Even at his peak in Cincinnati, Huggins wasn't attracting a lot of five-star recruits. Oh, he was getting his share of three-star guys and maybe some fours. But it's easy in retrospect to forget that even guys like Nick Van Exel and Kenyon Martin, who became fixtures in the NBA, arrived to play for Huggins without bands playing and parades being formed in their honor.

I would say fuggedaboudit, but can you imagine how that would translate into Kilicli's Turkish, Nyarsuk's French or Arabic (he speaks both) or Cottrill's (and anyone else who was raised here) West Virginian? Bryant's Brooklynese? Now that's a different story. And hey, if Jersey's Da'Sean Butler sticks around long enough to pass the torch, well, then certainly he could help.

Or maybe Joe Herber can come back. He spoke four languages when he arrived in Morgantown. Who knows how many he's picked up since then?

Not that this is unusual in college basketball these days. It's not. There has been a foreign influence in the game for decades. It's even been a hit-or-miss proposition at West Virginia.

Ah, where have you gone, Ales Chan? (Well, actually he's playing quite well for BK Prostejov in the Czech League, averaging 16 points. The guy who once fouled out of a game at Georgetown in - if I recall correctly - roughly eight minutes hasn't fouled out of a game this season).

Anyway, the topic here today, of course, is Nyarsuk, whose letter of intent arrived at West Virginia Wednesday. Is the 7-foot-1, 230-pound center more Chan or Hasheem Thabeet? Well, we'll have to wait and see. He averaged roughly 10 points, nine rebounds and three blocks last year at now-closed The Patterson School in North Carolina and is now at Beckley's Mountain State Academy, the same place Kilicli and Cottrill went last year.

Nyarsuk didn't have recruiters beating down his door with offers, but he generated plenty of curious looks from colleges, including Tennessee and Ohio State. Seven-footers tend to get looks. But to call him a project likely would not be unfair.

Then again, how many projects has Bob Huggins taken on and succeeded in turning into players?

Even at his peak in Cincinnati, Huggins wasn't attracting a lot of five-star recruits. Oh, he was getting his share of three-star guys and maybe some fours. But it's easy in retrospect to forget that even guys like Nick Van Exel and Kenyon Martin, who became fixtures in the NBA, arrived to play for Huggins without bands playing and parades being formed in their honor.

Huggins made reference to that last season when he was talking about recruiting. I never had a chance to use it, but now seems like as good a time as any.

"I've never been in a place where you can select [the top recruits]. We've just always taken the best guys that we could get,'' Huggins said last winter. "Two people recruited Van Exel. Kenyon wasn't that heavily recruited. Darnell Burton wasn't that heavily recruited. Steve Logan wasn't that heavily recruited. A lot of the guys that we had that turned out to be great players, they were guys that came in and worked.

"Van Exel and those guys used to call themselves Burger King All-Americans. They really worked at it and they came in with kind of a chip on their shoulder and things to prove.''

Not that Nyarsuk is Kenyon Martin or a Burger King All-American, or even a White Castle All-American. He's apparently a skinny kid without a great deal of refinement in his game.

But look at how much bigger and stronger guys like Kevin Jones and Devin Ebanks have gotten in a short amount of time under Huggins. Imagine if he can do anything approaching that with a kid in an 84-inch body.

And as for the language issue, well, Huggins has overcome that before, too. In fact, he's doing it now with Kilicli, who speaks terrific English despite having learned most of it in the last year by watching American television.

"He speaks better than a lot of the guys I've had,'' Huggins said.

Reach Dave Hickman at 304-348-1734 or dphickm...@aol.com.