Matt Humphrey fitting in at West Virginia after transferring from Boston College

Matt Humphrey is in very exclusive company, but not for anything he’s done on the basketball court.

He’s part of a small group of college basketball players to transfer twice during their career.

After spending his first two seasons at Oregon, he left for Boston College when head coach Ernie Kent was fired. Humphrey sat out a season before being looked at to lead a young Boston College team that struggled to a 9-22 season. He decided to transfer again shortly after the end of the season.

"Transferring is not something that you want to do," Humphrey said. "It’s not something I was happy about, but I was in two really difficult situations. You just have to do what’s best for you moving forward."

Once he made the decision to leave Boston College, Humphrey began hearing from schools who were interested in adding him for his final season of eligibility. One of the teams that were on the 6-foot-5 guard, who was eligible to play immediately after completing his undergraduate degree at Boston College last season, was West Virginia.

"You do your homework on schools. You’re not going to be interested in a school where you might not have an opportunity to play, but you have to understand that there are guys who have been there, performed well and earned their right to play next year," Humphrey said.

"There’s an opportunity here to make an impact right away. We’ve got some young guys, and they definitely need some more experience, and I just appreciate them coming after me and giving me the opportunity to play."

Something that really stood out to Humphrey as he was going through trying to figure out what team he would play his senior year with was West Virginia head coach Bob Huggins, who really made a great impression on him.

And, after just a week of working with the veteran coach, he knows what people were talking about when they described what it would be like to play for him.

"Huggs is Huggs," Humphrey said. "No offense to any coaches I’ve ever player for before, but you can definitely see why he’s got 700 wins. He demands a lot out of us and everybody goes out and gets stuff done. I like that a lot."

When he got to Morgantown last week, Humphrey had an easy time fitting in with the rest of the team.

He attributed a lot of that ease during the transition period to sophomore guard Aric Dickerson. Humphrey has known Dickerson since the two were growing up together in Chicago.

"You’re not an alien when you know somebody else that’s already been with the team for a while," Humphrey said. "Sometimes with transfers, the other players don’t really know what you’re going to do when you come in. They could feel threatened and stuff like that, but it was never like that with me being here with these guys.

"They like me, I like them and we’re ready to get to work."

During his career, Humphrey has been a productive player. He played 16 minutes per game during his two years at Oregon and was one of two players to average more than 10 points while playing 30.3 minutes per game for Boston College last year.

But the one thing he hasn’t gotten to experience yet in his college career is the chance to play in the NCAA tournament.

Now that he’s at WVU, he realizes that drought could be coming to an end soon.

"That’s really my goal for this year. I really want to finally get into the tournament and win some games," he said. "We break down the huddle, ‘national championship,’ every day, and there’s a reason for that. That’s what it’s all about.

"This is the last year, and I don’t think we should be aiming for anything less."