Wichita State basketball adds a third 2022 transfer in ‘hard-nosed’ Alabama player
Wichita State men’s basketball coach Isaac Brown is adding some toughness to the Shockers’ 2022-23 roster.
Alabama transfer James Rojas, a 6-foot-8, 220-pound fifth-year senior, announced on his social-media platforms Sunday that he has verbally committed to join Wichita State for his final season of college basketball.
Rojas is a former junior-college All-American at Hutchinson Community College. His three seasons at Alabama were limited by two major knee injuries. He tore the ACL in his right knee before the 2019-20 season, which led to a medical redshirt, and then he tore the ACL in his left knee last summer, which delayed his 2021-22 season debut until January.
Rojas climbed back from his second ACL tear to average 5.4 points and 2.4 rebounds in 13.5 minutes in 17 games, including three starts, this past season for an Alabama team that earned a No. 6 seed in the NCAA Tournament. He was credited as a team leader and respected voice in the Crimson Tide locker room.
“He’s one of the toughest players I’ve ever seen,” Alabama coach Nate Oats said in a statement about Rojas. “He’s the ultimate competitor and cares about the team winning first and foremost.”
Steve Eck, who coached Rojas at Hutchinson from 2017-19, said Rojas has an innate toughness about him that was present even before the injuries. He thinks the rehabilitation and banging against SEC bigs have only made him tougher since.
The Jamestown, N.Y. native was originally committed to Oats while he was the coach at Buffalo, then followed him to Alabama.
“Wichita State is getting a hard-nosed player,” Eck told The Eagle. “He doesn’t mind getting down and dirty. He doesn’t take any prisoners when he’s out there. Of course we got him when he was injury-free, but he bullied a lot of people down low and got to the basket pretty much whenever he wanted to.
“He never really got the chance to show how good he is at Alabama because of the injuries.”
Rojas joins Drexel transfer Xavier Bell, a 6-foot-3 guard and Wichita native, and Florida State transfer Quincy Ballard, a 7-foot center, as the third scholarship player in Wichita State’s 2022 recruiting class. The Shockers are expected to have at least eight scholarships available in this cycle.
Since the second major knee injury limited his mobility, Rojas carved out a role as Alabama’s back-up center. He would defend the 5 on defense and either drift to the dunker spot along the baseline, waiting for dump-offs from guards to go up with, or try to space the floor standing in the corner.
What position he plays at WSU likely depends on how the Shockers fill out the rest of their recruiting class. And it might depend on what kind of outside shooting Rojas brings with him to Wichita. Will he be closer to the career 23% 3-point shooter he was at Alabama on 52 career attempts? Or the 38% 3-pointer he was in his final year at Hutchinson?
It will certainly be a difficult ask for Rojas to defend certain stretch forwards at the 4 position in the American Athletic Conference. But if he’s able to make 3s consistently, he could potentially share the floor with WSU’s promising pick-and-pop, floor-spacing center Kenny Pohto or WSU’s other new center, Ballard, who is more of a rim-running big, as well as splitting time with them.
One thing that is not uncertain is Rojas’ ability to draw fouls. Simply put, he is a foul magnet. He drew more than five per 40 minutes this past season, a rate that would have led WSU, and boasted a 68.3% foul rate (41 free throws to 60 field goal attempts) that would have ranked No. 12 in the country if he played enough minutes to qualify for the leaderboard.
A big reason why is because of how much Rojas hangs out by the rim, where he shot 61.8% and also grabbed 8.3% of available offensive rebounds, an above-average rate comparable to former WSU forward Monzy Jackson this past season.
While those rates were accomplished with a small sample size at Alabama, they fall right in line with Rojas’ time in Hutchinson, where he saw plenty of playing time. In 65 career games with the Blue Dragons, Rojas had a 64.8% foul rate and averaged more than seven free-throw attempts per game during his All-America season.
Even more promising, Rojas knows how to capitalize on those fouls. He shot 75.6% from the foul line this past season at Alabama and he is a career 76% free throw shooter on 463 career attempts spread out between Hutchinson and Alabama.
Rojas joins a WSU roster that is still in the early stages of a sizable overhaul led by Brown and assistants Tyson Waterman, Billy Kennedy and Butch Pierre. The Shockers are currently counting on four returners from last season’s roster, in senior point guard Craig Porter, Pohto and the pair of redshirt freshmen wings — Jalen Ricks and Isaac Abidde. Sophomore star Ricky Council IV still could return to WSU after getting some NBA Draft feedback.
This story was originally published April 17, 2022 at 3:39 PM.
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