Every basketball team could use a 6-foot-8, 260 pound power forward who calls himself a bully and welcomes the dirty work of rebounding and blocking shots. For West Virginia’s sake, freshman Danny Jennings truly is a power forward, one whose off-court confidence and charisma complement his tough-as-nailsplaying style.

“Give me two dunks a game and I’ll be happy,” Jennings said, who still speaks with a strong New York accent and has a tattooed, chiseled frame more like a bodyguard than a basketball player. “When I was in high school, I was a bully. I was doing everything -- a beast to everybody.”

It’s believable standing face to face with Jennings, whose bulging arms look powerful enough to crush a basketball with relative ease. Intricate ink work lines both of Jennings’ biceps. On the inside part of his right arm is a tattoo of a demon that’s trying to dunk a basketball over an angel, which is pictured on the outside part of the same arm.

“This is supposed to be a mural of me,” Jennings said. “He’s trying dunk it on him, but I’m supposed to be blocking it.”

And on Jennings’ left arm is a religious cross with the words ‘His Blood’ drawn in the middle. “It’s like covered by the blood of Jesus.”

So clearly, there are two distinct sides to one of WVU’s new and promising freshman players. However, any way you look at it, Jennings is a force on the court who can impact games in a positive way. 

Fittingly, in a search for beefed up players who can withstand the physical demands of the superpower Big East conference, head coach Bob Huggins and Co. came calling for Jennings on the recruiting trail.

“We have been kind of outmatched physically, really in the past couple years,” said Huggins. “I think that’s getting ready to change.”

Before arriving on campus at WVU this fall, Jennings bounced around to different high schools. “It was tough at times,” Jennings said of constantly moving between schools. “I wanted to play college basketball and I knew I had to move to certain places to get my academics better.”

He eventually graduated from St. Thomas More School, in Conn., where he averaged 20 points and 10 rebounds, as a senior. Jennings’ exploits in high school earned him scholarship offers from Big East members WVU, St. John’s, South Florida, Seton Hall, Rutgers, Pitt and DePaul, as well as power programs Memphis and Xavier.

Teammate Wellington Smith, a senior forward, sees high potential in Jennings and evened likened him to a former NBA star. “If I had to compare him, I’d be like Shawn Kemp because of how he can jump,” said Smith. “He can jump out the gym.”

“You can’t compare yourself to guys like those,” Jennings said. “Those are legends. I’m happy he said that, but you got to live up to that. Kemp was a monster.

“Remember that dunk he cradled in and dunked it on that guy, then pointed at him like that?” Jennings was recalling a famous play that Kemp is well-known for during his days with Seattle -- an emphatic one-handed slam dunk, posterizing the Golden State’s Alton Lister, back in 1992.

Showing his glowing personality, Jennings joked about Kemp, “Yeah, he got a little fat. How many kids he have? 10, 11?”

Considering Jennings’ stature and aggressive nature on the basketball court, it wasn’t shocking to learn he used to play defensive end on his junior high football team. “I always loved basketball and I stopped playing football, but people were like, I’m big enough to play football,” said Jennings. “Basketball was always my love.”

Continuing on the basketball side of things, like most freshman, Jennings expects to experience some growing pains while transitioning to the college game. “It’s a whole different game,” he said. “Here, you have to be smart. There’s more I.Q. in college because everybody’s your size and strength.”

Physicality aside, and as Jennings noted, much of basketball comes down to mental mastery of fundamentals, technique, specific set plays and more for his case, learning the way Huggins demands things to be done. “Sometimes learning the plays can be frustrating,” admitted Jennings. “It’s going to take time because it’s a lot. It’s like five new things everyday in practice that we have to learn.”

But from a basic standpoint early on, Jennings says, “You just got to learn where to be at the right spots and how to play offense and defense hard, every possession.”

Da’Sean Butler, another forward for WVU, has taken notice to Jennings’ efforts thus far in practice. “Danny is just a work-a-holic,” Butler said.

From day one of the program‘s transformation under Huggins, it was well known the coach would develop his players into tough-minded, physical specimens that featured bodies which were NBA-sized and NBA-ready. Jennings perhaps enters WVU with such a mold even as a freshman -- he’s currently listed at 260 pounds, but he says he could get even bigger over the course of his WVU career. “I just see my potential because I’m only a freshman. Three years down the road, imagine how big I could be.”

Jennings said he could add on another 20 pounds so long as he can jump and get up and down the court as effectively.

Either way, Jennings has a big body, big personality and is expected to do big things for Huggins and the Mountaineers.