This is the end of the beginning for Deniz Kilicli. He’s watched WVU play 19 regular season games and been a tantalizing prospect in two exhibitions. He’ll observe Saturday’s WVU v. Louisville game and then be eligible to play Wednesday against Pitt.

“I’ve started to count not days, but hours now,” he said. “I had one day off not long ago after like four weeks and I was sitting in my dorm room. Time is not running. I felt like everything stopped and I was sitting there like, ‘Oh, my God. This is so boring.'”

Expectations? Let’s give it a whirl…

For starters, “he’s going to play,” Huggins said last week, which was about the understatement of the season. How much is really up to Kilicli, but also his teammates.

Huggins said Thursday he doesn’t envision Kilicli starting and said Wellington Smith has played too well lately for him to lose his spot — though one wonders if that was a possibility before. The bench minutes are clearly there for the taking, though, and guys like Cam Thoroughman and John Flowers and maybe even Casey Mitchell and Dalton Pepper are going to have to prove themselves as Kilicli does the same.

Kilicli’s conditioning won’t be there right away. Maybe he’s running and practicing a lot and perhaps he can handle marathon sessions of both, but it’s just so different to be out there in a game that matters with the crowd, the adrenaline and the mental demands, to say nothing of the physical ones. If he can give a few minutes at a time early on and build on that, no one will complain.

Kilicli won’t speculate on his contributions other than to say, “I’m an extra body on the team,” and that he can absorb and hand out some punishment and protect his teammates from having to do the same.

What everyone else says is a little different, though. From the opinions of others, I gather Kilicli is a terrific passer who will be able to facilitate some inside-out passes and get teammates step-in jumpers and 3-pointers. For that to be effective, he’ll first have to prove he can score down low. Huggins said, “He’s the best low post scorer we have,” and Kilicli admitted he can score with both hands.

Rebounding could be an issue and even if he’s getting better at it in practice, it is again just a different thing to do in a game. Give that time. Same goes for defense. 

What we see of Kilicli the first three games will be one thing. What he learns and shows the next three will be another and I get the feeling they want to have him peaking right about mid-February and changing the way everyone thinks about the Mountaineers when postseason play arrives.