West Virginia University Lands Alexander through Hargrave Military Academy

The NCAA men’s basketball tournament is full of unheralded players who slipped through the recruiting cracks, with few having as great an impact as West Virginia’s Joe Alexander.

By Doug Doughty
“West Virginia University Lands Alexander through HMA” first appeared Thursday, March 27, 2008 in The Roanoke Times. Doug Doughty is a Roanoke Times sports writer. Copyright 2008 by The Roanoke Times. Used with permission.

The NCAA men’s basketball tournament is full of unheralded players who slipped through the recruiting cracks, with few having as great an impact as West Virginia’s Joe Alexander.

Alexander, a 6-foot-8, 230-pound junior who leads the Mountaineers (26-10) in scoring and rebounding, was either the sixth or seventh man on the 2004-05 Hargrave Military Academy postgraduate team.

At Hargrave, which recently won the national prep school championship and went undefeated (29-0) for the first time, that meant he was playing behind at least five Division I signees.

“It’s a great Hargrave story,” HMA coach Kevin Keatts said. “He was fully qualified, a very bright student who had a half-scholarship to a Division II school, Shepherd, if that. Nobody else had offered him.

“He came up. He worked out for us. I thought he had a chance to be really good. I could not understand why a lot of programs had not offered him. So, we took him at Hargrave and he was probably the second-best athlete I’ve ever had at the school besides James White.”

Alexander, originally from Linganore High School in Frederick, Md., took an official visit to Tulane before Keatts got West Virginia involved.

“Coaches came in and a lot of them flirted with him and a lot of them missed on him once again,” Keatts said. “I called [then-WVU coach] John Beilein because he traditionally plays with big forwards who can step out and shoot it. He came up, watched him work out and fell in love with him.”

Alexander was on a Hargrave team that included Pittsburgh’s Sam Young, Virginia Tech’s A.D. Vassallo and Villanova’s Shane Clark. All of them either had signed or committed to Division I programs before enrolling at Hargrave.

Alexander’s father “was familiar with the Big Ten and there were some Big Ten schools who actually didn’t think he was good enough,” Keatts said. “Now, this kid’s put himself in a situation where he’s going to make money.”

Hargrave Military Academy logo.