MORGANTOWN — You may have heard this college basketball season was packed with talented freshmen.

Between BYU’s A.J. Dybantsa and Kansas’ Darryn Peterson, West Virginia has already scouted and performed against the two projected top picks in the 2026 NBA Draft.

Duke’s Cameron Boozer was just four-tenths of a second of leading the Blue Devils to the Final Four and is still the odds-on favorite to be named the national player of the year. Of the top 10 scorers in the nation this season, four of them are freshmen.

Stanford guard Ebuka Okorie is the one you don’t know.

“They have one of the best players in the country, another one of those freshmen,” WVU head coach Ross Hodge said. “He maybe didn’t have some of the same level of hype as some of the freshmen in our league, but he’s certainly had that same level of production and that same level of impact.”

That impact nearly led the Cardinal (20-12) to the NCAA tournament this season. As it stands, Okorie, a native of New Hampshire, will lead Stanford against the Mountaineers (18-14) at 8 p.m. Thursday in the first round of the College Basketball Crown tournament.

Okorie will enter the game eighth in the country in scoring at 22.8 points per game. That includes a 40-point game against Georgia Tech. He put up 34 against Pitt, 28 against Louisville and has had 18 games with at least 20 points. WVU has had 19 total from its entire roster this season.

“He’s dynamic,” Hodge continued. “He wasn’t a great shooter in high school. That wasn’t a strength of his, but he’s added that to his game, which has made him a tough cover. He’s fast and aggressive. He gets other guys involved. It starts with him.”

Okorie’s high school days at Brewster (N.H.) Academy is what maybe separates him from the rest of the hyped-up class of 2025. He was named New Hampshire’s Gatorade Player of the Year, yet when it came to recruiting rankings and recruiting stars, Okorie wasn’t in the top 100 and fell through the cracks.

Before Stanford coach Kyle Smith offered Okorie a scholarship during his senior year, the guard was being recruited by the likes of Albany and Bryant University. He committed to Harvard as a junior.

That starting point is worlds away from the opportunities Dybantsa entertained coming out as the No. 1-ranked player in the class.

“Just from watching (Okorie), I would guess he has an incredible work ethic,” Hodge said. “I’m sure he loves the game. With recruiting, some guys just bloom later. They rank guys now when they’re in the seventh or eighth grade and some guys have the ability to live off that hype or that ranking and they’re actually not that good.

“Then you have some other guys like (Okorie) who have very minimal interest from Power Five teams. That’s what I love about sports more than anything. There comes a time, whether you were a five-star recruit or a no-star recruit, you actually step on the floor and find out that night who is actually better than the other person.”

Okorie took his opportunity with the Cardinal and ran with it. He scored 26 in the season opener against Portland State and added 29 more against Montana four days later. Through his first four college games, Okorie was averaging 25.5 points per game. He averaged 14 per game as a high school senior.

“He got an opportunity and a lot of times that can impact a player,” Hodge said. “Had he gone to a situation where he had to play behind a veteran guard, it could’ve been different. The opportunity presented itself and the pieces fit around him and coach Smith is a great coach. He’s now put himself in position to do some amazing things.”

Yet Okorie is still fighting for his respect. NBA mock drafts are dominated by freshmen this season, but his name is not included. When the season is complete, the 6-foot-2 guard just may wind up as the best freshman no one knows.

“I know in college football, when they talk about the Heisman, they talk about the East Coast bias,” Hodge said. “I don’t know, Stanford’s games are on later and maybe most of the world is sleeping by the time they get on TV. Obviously, the industry is fully aware and coaches and programs are fully aware of what he is.”