West Virginia center Jesse Edwards out four weeks with wrist injury

The hits keep on coming for West Virginia’s 2023-24 basketball team as the Mountaineers have now lost their second-leading scorer and top rebounder for an extended period of time.

Monday afternoon, the team Twitter account posted news of a a fractured right wrist for starting center Jesse Edwards, a senior who transferred over from Syracuse. Here was the WVU statement on his injury:

“West Virginia University fifth-year senior center Jesse Edwards will miss approximately four weeks due to a fractured right wrist, men’s basketball coach Josh Eilert announced today. Edwards will have surgery this week.”

Man oh man, what can you say? This Edwards news is the cherry on top of a sour luck sundae to start this season for the Mountaineer hoops program as he was averaging 14.8 points, 8.7 rebounds and 1.7 blocks per game through 10 contests in 2023-24.

Now, Let’s take a look at just how rotten the run of fortune has been in M-Town.

Murphy’s Law in Morgantown

That old Irishman was right, everything bad that could happen to West Virginia since the end of last season… has happened. Frankly, everything was fine until this summer. In fact, Bob Huggins even pulled in a terrific transfer haul and had a nice core of returners to set up what could have been another Big 12 contender.

Alas, Huggins was arrested for DUI this summer and ultimately let go, which included a heated back-and-forth with the University over whether or not he resigned. Huggins initially appeared to resign, but weeks later, he claimed he actually hadn’t and declared he should be put back in charge of the program. He was not, and Eilert took over.

That change in leadership caused a mass of transfers out while a couple new ones came in. But once the season started, beyond the awkwardness of the situation and the challenge of getting a new coach and roster to gel on the fly, the players could hardly get on the floor.

Kerr Kriisa, Arizona transfer, had to miss nine games for NCAA suspension. RaeQuan Battle, another portal addition, hasn’t been cleared eligible to play following the second transfer of his career. Same goes for Noah Farrakhan, who finally got the OK to play in his first game the other day thanks to a court ruling.

Even another transfer, Akok Akok, collapsed during a preseason game and has only been able to appear in three total games for WVU this season. Now, of course, arguably the best transfer of the bunch and perhaps the most important two-way player on the team, Jesse Edwards, is down for likely a month or more.