MORGANTOWN, W. Va. — The way West Virginia guard Jermaine Haley explained it, there is a noticeable difference in Chase Harler as a senior as opposed to last season.
“When you’re a senior, the coaches pretty much know what to expect from you,” Haley said after the Mountaineers’ 94-84 season-opening win against Akron on Friday. “You can just go out there and play and not have to worry about all of the little things that you worried about before.”
Harler is all-in on that theory, before grinning from ear to ear and saying he’s added the role of instigator to his list of duties this season, which we’l get to in a moment.
He spent his first three seasons trying to develop a role as a shot-maker.
The problem was, by the end of his sophomore season, Harler was shooting just 30 percent from the field.
It hurt Harler’s playing time to the point where he considered transferring to another school going into his junior year, until WVU head coach Bob Huggins talked him out of it.
A year later, Harler is all smiles when thinking about his place on the roster.
“Honestly, since this summer, I’ve just begun to have way more fun with basketball,” said Harler, who came off the bench to shoot 3 of 5 from the field and scored nine points against the Zips. “I’m playing more loose and more confident. I’m more carefree in a good way.”
It shows to the point to where maybe we are just now beginning to see the real Chase Harler, one who was all smiles after getting run over by Akron power forward Xeyrius Williams when both players were going after a loose ball.
“I went for the ball for half a second and then I was trying to take a charge. He ran me over, I’m not going to lie,” Harler said.
For the record, Williams is 6-foot-9 and 220 pounds. Harler lists himself at, “I’m only 6-3 and about two bills. I stayed in the game, but I’m going to be feeling that later,” Harler said. “It was like an Oklahoma drill in football, but I’ve never played football, which you can see.”
As for the instigator role, Harler drew a technical foul from Akron guard Tyler Cheese in the second half while both players were trailing the action and running up the court.
Cheese had just had his shot blocked by Oscar Tshiebwe and Harler let him know about it.
“I’m an instigator, so it was a great opportunity for me to kind of show those skills,” Harler said. “I was a little worried, because I said something after the block and the new rules say you’re not supposed to do that. I didn’t get caught, so it was good.”
Cheese gave Harler a little nudge while they were running up the court. Harler sold it as if he had just been given a right hook from Mike Tyson and out came the technical foul.
“Chase is definitely a character,” Haley said. “He can definitely egg guys on pretty well.”
Make no mistake about it, Harler’s instigator role doesn’t end when the game is over.
“I do it off the court, too, and get guys all fired up,” Harler said. “It’s mostly when we’re all just hanging out and I’ll say something about someone and then they’ll go over and tell that person and then it comes back to me. I go, ‘Yo, I didn’t do anything. That’s your guys’ problem.”
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