At Moeller and West Virginia, Miles McBride made instant impacts

MORGANTOWN, W. Va. — At some point Tuesday, “Take Me Home Country Roads” could be played in two basketball arenas.

In Morgantown, the 12th-ranked West Virginia men’s basketball team hopes to have it played after a victory against TCU (12-3, 3-0 Big 12) in Tuesday’s 9 p.m. game against the surprising Horned Frogs.

Some 300 miles away in Cincinnati, the song will also be played between the third and fourth quarters of Archbishop Moeller’s game against Wayne (Ohio) High School.

As for the reason, one has to look no further than WVU freshman guard Miles McBride.

“We actually started doing that last year when Miles was still here,” Moeller head coach Carl Kremer said. “We still do it now. That’s the kind of impact he had on our school. There are a ton of West Virginia fans living in Cincinnati right now, I can assure you of that.”

The Mountaineers (13-2, 2-1) rode McBride’s career-high 22 points to a victory on Saturday against Texas Tech. It earned him his second Big 12 Newcomer of the Week award on Monday.

Afterward, the 6-foot-2 guard known as “Deuce” calmly walked into the postgame media scrum and spoke as if he had barely played in the game.

“That’s always Deuce,” WVU forward Derek Culver said. “Deuce is always calm and he keeps his composure. He never gets out of his comfort zone.”

Doesn’t mean that McBride doesn’t have anything to say.

Just the opposite, actually, as he was referred to himself as “fearless,” even though he has yet to play a full season of college basketball.

It’s not bragging, as McBride may be the most humble player on the Mountaineers’ roster.

Maybe the most confident, too, as evident by his run of six straight games scoring in double figures that has seen him become WVU’s third-leading scorer at 10.1 points per game heading into the TCU game.

“There is a part of me that isn’t surprised by his success at all,” said Kremer, who won two Ohio Division I state titles with McBride playing as his point guard. “I always kind of expected it for him. He was a generational type of player for us.

“Then, I see him go score 21 against Ohio State and play well on the road against Kansas and score 22 against Texas Tech, and, yeah, I guess it does surprise me some, because he’s doing it against some of the best competition in the country.”

As for McBride’s confident, yet humble demeanor, that doesn’t surprise Kremer at all. He saw it for four years at Moeller.

“In my previous 30 years, I never had a freshman play on the varsity team,” Kremer said. “Miles was the first one. He clearly had the talent, but a lot of young kids have talent.

“What Miles had at such a young age was a mature mentality. You bring a young kid up and they’ll usually start to feel a lot of pressure. Not Miles. I knew he could handle it. He got it.”

Huggins calls his young guard “tough,” something he admits comes from many conversations with Kremer.

McBride committed to WVU while he was laid up with a broken ankle, which caused him to miss most of his junior season.

Most Division I schools backed off from recruiting McBride. Others were waiting to see how he responded after the injury.

Not Huggins.

“The question I asked Carl when we recruited Deuce is what can you tell me about him that’s his best attribute?” Huggins began. “Carl said he was the second toughest guy he ever had and that I coached the first one.”

The first being former Cincinnati standout Bobby Brannen, a forward for the Bearcats’ Elite Eight team in 1996.

“If he was anything like Bobby Brannen from a competitiveness nature, I wanted the guy,” Huggins continued. “And he is. He definitely is.”

Kremer saw that in McBride when he was a freshman at Moeller. He still sees it in McBride as a freshman at West Virginia.

“I realize I’m a little biased here, but Miles has such a humility about him and he knows things in life don’t always have to be about him. I think that’s rare,” Kremer said. “I think that’s why people gravitate toward him, because he’s such a likable kid.

“In the end, I really believe he was born to play hoops. I think West Virginia may have got the recruiting steal of the century with him.”

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