Round of Reubens

First up is some more recruiting news on both the basketball and football fronts. This week the number one rated offensive lineman in the country, according to Rivals, visited WVU and met with the coaching staff. Morgan Moses is 6'7" and weighs almost 350 pounds. He has offers from Alabama, VT, Georgia, Tennessee, and Florida among others. What are the chances he signs with WVU? Who knows now, but he is from Richmond, VA and the Boyd/Heastie combination is putting the full court press on him. It will be interesting because of the four VA recruits thus far only Boyd was offered by traditional VA recruiting power VT (although Heastie would have been offered too). So this will be one of the first times Chris Beatty goes head to head with VT for a big recruit. VT has the tradition in the area, but WVU has the Boyd/Heastie/Davenport/Alston (and they all presumably have phones). Also from the Hickman article it appears as though Pat Liebig is coming back after taking care of his family for a few years after his father fell ill. He will join former Wake Forest recruit Uriah Grant as reinforcements for the defensive line.

In basketball there is an open scholarship now that Joe has flown off to the NBA. According to Mike Casazza that might be used on Dee Proby a JC forward that had previously signed to Oklahoma State.

Proby played the past two years at Angelina Community College, in Lufkin, Texas. He averaged 11.4 points and 4.3 rebounds this past season. Despite his size, Proby is known for his shooting range out to the 3-point line. He made 27 of 96 attempts as a sophomore.

Speaking of basketball the Mountaineers are close to finishing their scheduling for next year with the addition of Ohio State and a trip to Vegas. Bob Huggins is trying to upgrade the schedule, but it will still have Elon, Cleveland State, and Radford to squeeze in between games at Mississippi and Duquesne. WVU has agreed in principal to a home and home with the Buckeyes over the next two years. Meanwhile WVU will head for the Las Vegas Invitational at the end of November. The LVI will consist of 4 games, two in West Virginia and two in the desert.

The Mountaineers will play Longwood Nov. 20 in Morgantown and Delaware State Nov. 25 in Charleston as part of the event.

West Virginia then meets Iowa, Kansas State or Kentucky Nov. 28-29 in Las Vegas.

WVU was picked for the LVI for two reasons. The first is the returning talent from a team that made the Sweet 16. The second is a chance to get some of that sweet West Virginia gambling money into Nevada. See right now we are keeping it all here apparently as the state ranks second only to Nevada in the share of the state budget that comes from gambling revenues.

That's the finding of a new report that also ranks the Mountain State ahead of Nevada and all other states in terms of how much that share of the budget grew between 1998 and 2006.

The state now brings in almost 9% of the state budget revenue from gambling. West Virginia: Open for business craps.