BY JOHN ANTONIK

WVUSPORTS.COM

 

Da'Sean Butler is spending another summer in Morgantown waiting for the right phone call informing him where he is going to be spending the rest of this year.

 

Whenever that call comes, he's pretty sure it's going to be taking him out of the country once again.

 

Ever since leading West Virginia to the NCAA Final Four in 2010 - and then seriously injuring his knee once he got there - Butler's basketball career has taken him to such faraway places as Aalstar, Belgium, Reims, France and Ulm, Germany.

 

In between was a year-long stop in Austin, Texas, playing for the San Antonio Spurs' D-League team and another year in Morgantown working as Bob Huggins' graduate assistant coach while recovering from a second serious knee injury.

 

"I had a blast that year," Butler recalled recently before taking part in Huggins' annual fantasy camp.

 

Perhaps so, but a year as a GA, a year of D-League basketball and three different trips across the pond is not what most of us had envisioned Butler's post-WVU career to be. That's particularly true given the way he played during his brilliant senior season in 2010 when he averaged 17.2 points per game and earned John Wooden All-America honors.

 

Who can ever forget what he did that season?

 

Four times Butler hit game-winning shots, two of those coming in the BIG EAST Tournament to give West Virginia its only hoop title in the 16 years the Mountaineers participated in the league.

 

He also made a game-winning 3 with 2.3 seconds left to defeat Marquette and a length-of-the-floor driving basket with 1.2 seconds remaining to keep Cleveland State from upsetting the Mountaineers during the regular season.

 

Someone once told me that Butler called his game-winner against Marquette, one of his patented length-of-the-floor basketball displays that required a couple of changes of direction before spinning back to his shooting hand for a fadeaway 3 with a hand in his face - not exactly the easiest shot to make at the park, let alone during a high-pressure BIG EAST game in front of 14,000 fans at the WVU Coliseum.

 

"Whatever people told you happened, happened," Butler laughed. "I don't want to ruin their stories."

 

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Editor's Note: Photo courtesy of WVU Sports Communications. Cover photo by Brian Persinger also courtesy of WVU Sports Communications.