It’s possible this is not the case, but you may have first learned of Alek Manoah when this play made the SportsCenter top 10. Me? I found out about him when he signed with West Virginia’s baseball team in November 2015, a criminally underreported acquisition of talent for a program that just did not and could not land a player of that caliber.

“That caliber?” you say.

Yeah. He’s a professional talent. That’s not new to the Mountaineers. They’ve had players drafted before and after their senior seasons, and they’ve lost high school recruits to the draft before and since Randy Mazey was named the manager in June 2012. But Manoah is a different cat.

He was one of the top prep prospects in his recruiting class. When the draft rolled around last summer, I was hearing he could, would and should be picked in the first five or six rounds, but the Mountaineers were confident and the Manoahs were not desperate. Alek’s older brother was drafted out of high school, and Erik, a 13th round pick by the Mets niw in the Angels farm system, signed for $200,000. Alek was held in higher regard. The money would be there right away, but it’d be there later, too. He never thought different.

Alek was instead excited about playing and learning in college, and he wouldn’t be pressured into something.

That’s interesting, but so is Manoah. He says he observed the “supernatural” in the recruiting process and followed his faith. It’s quite a story you have to read to believe, namely for what happened on his official visit to an SEC program. Still, when a big-time prospect isn’t even picked, when a team doesn’t take a flier late just in case the kid changes his mind or gets hurt or whatever, it’s sometimes because he’s made it clear he would not sign.

Manoah denied that, and I was told he was contacted — maybe first contacted — in the third round. You can tell, though, that Manoah had options and did what he wanted. He’s his own dude.

Now, how WVU got itself into that position with the big freshman who can swat home runs and throw seventh-inning fastballs in the low 90s is, of course, fascinating. The Mountaineers concede this is not a player they’d normally be involved with, if not early then certainly not late in the process, but here they are.

Manoah started out as the closer who’d bat every now and them. Then he became a mid-week starting pitcher and lit up the radar gun at Maryland. Then he became a weekend starter, and went eight solid innings on the road at Oklahoma. He’s asked for the ball against one of the best offensive teams in the country for his first start and he quieted the best bats in the Big 12 last weekend. He’s scheduled to start Saturday in the middle game of the three-game home series against Gardner-Webb.

Everything came together when pitching coach/recruiting coordinator Derek Matlock deployed some strategy to get Manoah’s attention.

Matlock has a trick he likes to use to get a recruit’s attention. He sticks around for the end of tournaments, when many other college coaches have already seen who they wanted to see and are either on their way back to campus or to the next event.

So one day following WVU’s 2015 season, Manoah remembered playing in a consolation game “against a really bad team.” He’d spoken with the Mountaineers enough to take them seriously and was interested in what they had to offer, from the Big 12 to the new ballpark to the coaching staff.

“I was on deck, and there were probably 10 people in the crowd, but one of them was Matlock, and he’s sitting right there, right behind me in the on-deck circle,” Manoah said.

Their eyes met. Manoah recovered from the momentary surprise and heard Matlock talk.

“Come on, big boy,” Matlock said. “Hit one for me.”

Manoah took his turn and hit a home run. After the game, Matlock was waiting for Manoah as he left the field, and Matlock knew he was alone. That’s the trick.

“I said, ‘Hey, I made it here. Where’s Florida, Auburn and Mississippi State right now? You know what, they’re probably watching other players and trying to get other guys right now,’ ” Matlock said. “We ended up talking for about 45 minutes about his family and Miami, and we kind of built the relationship right there.”