Inside The Huskies

Matthews Returned to West Virginia to Win a Title

The former Husky forward will team up with ex-UW guard Erik Stevenson.

Dan Raley

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Emmitt Matthews Jr. spoke about coming home. He did this last October, when the Tacoma native joined the University of Washington basketball team, as one of four locally produced players did this.

Matthews had this conversation once more on Friday when announcing he would be returning to West Virginia, where he spent three seasons before playing this past year for the Huskies.

On Friday, the 6-foot-7 senior forward talked about winning a championship for the Big 12 Mountaineers and coach Bob Huggins, something he apparently didn't think was possible in Montlake for Mike Hopkins' program.

For a moment, Matthews could have been part of a proposed UW front line that consisted of 6-foot-11 Franck Kepnang, 6-foot-11 Fadaws Aimaq and his dunking self.

Instead, the Huskies coaxed only Kepnang away from Oregon as Aimaq, a Vancouver, B.C., native, chose Texas Tech as a transfer portal destination and Matthews decided we would prefer to play alongside the much-traveled Erik Stevenson, another former UW player, and others.

Stevenson likewise played one season for the Huskies, for a 5-21 team in 2020-21, and first transferred to South Carolina before making the move to West Virginia. The Lacey, Washington, native originally played two seasons at Wichita State.

“I think going to another school and learning a new system is hard to do — I know the system, the play style and the coaching,” Matthews told Metro News. “I didn’t burn any bridges when I left. Hopefully, we can get Huggs a title.”

Matthews leaves behind a UW team that finished 17-14 while he was in town and will rebuild once more this season. He averaged 11.7 points and 4.7 rebounds per game, finishing as the Huskies' second-leading scorer, and shot 43 percent from the field and 34 percent from 3-point range.

At West Virginia, Matthews started 67 of 92 games, but never averaged more than 7.7 points an outing. That should change after his season at the UW. 

“I think I shot the ball a lot better from three,” Matthews said. “I think I was a little more aggressive than I’ve ever been.”

Matthews came to the UW with Terrell Brown Jr. (Arizona), Daejon Davis (Stanford) and PJ Fuller (TCU). Brown, who led the Pac-12 in scoring with a 21.7 average, and Davis, used up their eligibility. With Matthews leaving, only Fuller, a 6-foot-4 guard, remains from that group. 

Meantime, the Huskies are left to scramble to fill out their roster after these recent rejections and would be considered a lower-level Pac-12 team if they had to play right now.

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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