MORGANTOWN, W. Va. — It is the unknown that begins every good sports story, and so far this preseason, the West Virginia men’s basketball team has plenty of it to provide.
It would be nice to sit here and say freshman Oscar Tshiebwe will quickly develop into an All-American or Derek Culver will challenge for Big 12 Player of the Year or even that Jordan McCabe will become a fixture at point guard.
Anyone who witnessed last week’s Gold-Blue Debut last week likely came out of it feeling better about a WVU program that is looking to rebound from last season’s 15-21 finish that ended with an 18-point drubbing at the hands of Coastal Carolina in the CBI.
To simply think there are some concrete answers out there on the floor right now as to how the Mountaineers get back to the NCAA tournament, well, it’s probably a bit early for that.
Save for maybe possibly two of the biggest unknowns on the Mountaineers’ roster: Junior-college recruits Taz Sherman and Sean McNeil.
My biggest take from the entire Gold-Blue event is that those two young men can play.
Not just shoot the ball, either, which both are known for.
In fact, when asked about the duo’s shooting, Bob Huggins didn’t bother hiding the fact he has high expectations for Sherman and McNeil in that area.
“I thought they were are best shooters when we recruited them,” he said. “I think they are our two best shooters.”
Their stories of how McNeil and Sherman ended up in junior college in the first place are nearly identical.
Neither were recruited by a Division I school coming out of high school, but both felt they belonged at that level.
McNeil was at a Division II school in Louisville for less than a week before he decided it wasn’t for him. He sat out for a year before enrolling at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio.
Sherman, even though he was already academically qualified — the biggest reason most athletes go to junior college in the first place — enrolled at Collin College in McKinley, Texas.
They were about as unknown to Division I schools as it gets, but it didn’t stay that way for long.
McNeil dropped 40 points in his first junior-college game.
As for Sherman, he was averaging 33 points and shooting 56 percent from 3-point range just six games into his sophomore season.
We’re not suggesting those numbers will continue at West Virginia, but after watching them last Friday, their transition to Division I looks to be a rather smooth one.
“You watch Sean shoot the ball and when it doesn’t go in, you think there’s something wrong,” Huggins said. “He has such a natural motion that you think it’s going to go in every time.”
Neither are lost on defense, which was probably the biggest question for the pair coming into this season.
“I feel like I can adjust here faster, because defense has always been a big part of my game,” Sherman said this summer.
And all of a sudden, you’ve got the makings of one solid recruiting class.
Tshiebwe, once he gets more comfortable on where he’s supposed to be on offense instead of over-thinking everything, has the look of being the real deal.
Early returns on fellow freshman Miles McBride is that he’s not going to hurt you at all in his first season and then will only get better from there.
Sherman and McBride were thought to be complimentary pieces along for the ride, but it appears they are much more than that.
“Taz can shoot it,” Huggins said. “You get 26 points a game in the (junior college) league he played in, you can score. Sean is strong and can defend.”
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