By ADAM ZAGORIA
West Virginia transfer Jose Perez has committed to Arizona State and is immediately eligible as a graduate transfer, a source with direct knowledge told ZAGSBLOG.
“Coach [Bobby] Hurley, coach [Jermaine] Kimbrough and coach [Nick] Irvin displayed the plan for me and my future,” Perez told ZAGSBLOG.
“People haven’t seen me play in 2 years so I have a lot to show people this year.”
The 6-foot-5 Perez, the MAAC Preseason Player of the Year a year ago, graduated from West Virginia despite never playing a game at the Big 12 school.
Arizona State runs on a tri-semester system and Session B of their 1st semester starts Monday. The plan now is to get him practicing and ramp him up physically ahead of the start of the season Nov. 8.
Arizona State is Perez’s fifth school after Gardner-Webb, Marquette, Manhattan and West Virginia.
West Virginia parted ways with Perez on Sept. 30 because he had not been going to study hall.
Perez, who turned 25 Saturday, took to social media at the time to say he felt he had been “thrown to the street like a dead animal.” He said the issue stemmed from his failure to attend a study hall, “and that’s where the decision was made and nowhere else.” He said he was being forced to be “a grad student in undergrad classes after I graduated” and he “never accepted being put in undergraduate classes.”
He announced his transfer to West Virginia last Oct. 29 after Manhattan fired his coach and mentor, Steve Masiello, two weeks before the start of the season, a story broken by ZAGSBLOG. (Masiello later joined Rick Pitino’s staff at Iona and is now with him at St. John’s.)
On Dec. 16, the NCAA denied West Virginia’s request for immediate eligibility for Perez, and on Jan. 11 they denied his waiver request.
After former coach Bob Huggins resigned in June, Perez entered the Transfer Portal, only to withdraw in July.
He started 29 games in the 2021-22 season and played in all 30, averaging 18.9 ppg, 4.5 apg and 3.2 rpg.
Arizona State is still awaiting word on the eligibility of LSU transfer Adam Miller, who averaged 11.5 points last season.
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