Rarely if ever will you find college players at this level who don’t know one another from one experience or another. If they weren’t teammates on an international team before their NCAA careers, then they tried out for the same squad. If they weren’t at the same Nike camp, they had common acquaintances who were. If they didn’t see one another on the AAU circuit, then they did during the college camp grind. If their teams weren’t foes in the same city, then they were in the same state.

Sometimes the road narrows and bends and leads you back home. This was a big deal last year for West Virginia and its Ohio Mountaineers.

And every now and then, they come from the same borough.

That’s very much the situation for this WVU team. A few of the Mountaineers know or at least encountered their teammates from AAU play. Some had far more familiar experiences during the primitive stages of their careers, which is what makes this site and the paths of Teyvon Myers, Tarik Phillip and even Jaysean Paige so cool this weekend.

“I’m not going to sugarcoat it,” Myers said. “My first organized game was against Tarik — and it was a rough one. I was playing up [in age group] and they crushed us.”

Myers smiled.

“Tarik used to have braces,” Myers said. “So every time he’d get hit in the mouth, he’d bleed. Then it was like when Kobe [Bryant] gave the face, the look. He’d turn it on and the game would be over.”

Phillip remembers the days well.

“I’ve known Teyvon since I was a little kid,” said the junior guard. “He always played in the park with me. We played against each other a couple times. He won a couple games; I won a couple games. We’d always go on scoring rampages when we’d go against each other.”