I went to the Coliseum last night to see WVU v. American and I wanted to keep an eye on Casey Mitchell. Was this scoring spree to be taken seriously and possibly projected for an entire season?

Or was the spree just that and the product of a good shooter on a great roll?

Well, 27 points later, I’m trending toward convinced he might be a very good player.

Casey Mitchell had his fourth consecutive 25-point game Wednesday night, which would be exactly four more than he had for West Virginia all of last season.

With a basket with 8:15 left in the 71-50 victory against American, the senior shooting guard scored his 131st point of the season. He had 130 in 35 games last year.

The 27 points he scored against the Eagles were as many as he scored in the final 10 games last season, a time when he was actually increasingly dependable for the Final Four-bound Mountaineers.

Seriously, four straight 25-point games — Butler and Alexander never did that — and he was only 1-for-3 from 3-point range. American tried to step on his toes. Mitchell moved them and drove to the basket.

I did not think he was this good on the bounce. He can shoot. No one denies or has denied that, even last year, but he moves with the ball and gets his shot off in motion pretty well. Again, just three 3s, but 11 free throws attempted. That’s indicative of how he played.

And we forget this, but he wasn’t healthy for the majority of last year. His knee was a lingering issues that needed constant treatment and it conspired to keep him stationary at times. That was as much a factor on defense as it was offense, and if you can’t play defense, you can’t relaly play for Bob Huggins.

The  knee bothered his confidence the most, though, and if you watch him now you can see he has very few mental limitations … except that might not be shooting enough. Good problem to have.  

I’m not going to assume 22 points per game, especially across the Big East, where there are a lot of pretty good guards, but I don’t see him vanishing.

Your thoughts?