MORGANTOWN — Gabe Osabuohien glanced down at the box score that was sitting in front of him, and for the first time on Friday, the West Virginia forward was caught off guard.
“Man, you scored 28 points?” he said while looking over at teammate Taz Sherman. “I didn’t know it was that much.”
“I knew that,” Sherman replied.
Through the first six games of the season, pretty much everyone seems to be getting on board with Sherman’s scoring exploits.
The fifth-year senior set a career high with his 28 in Friday’s 80-77 victory against Eastern Kentucky, and the Mountaineers (5-1) needed every single one of them.
“I was trying to find my teammates early, guys like Sean (McNeil) and JB (Jalen Bridges), I was trying to get them shots early,” Sherman said. “I know most of the main focus is going to be on when I have the ball, am I going to look to score every time?
“If I can get my teammates going and then get myself going, we’re almost unbeatable.”
Sherman’s 20.5 scoring average is second in the Big 12, behind only Kansas guard Ochai Agbaji (23.6 ppg), and he’s been WVU’s top scorer in five of the six games played.
The only game Sherman wasn’t the leading scorer was in last week’s come-from-behind victory against Clemson in the Charleston Classic.
Sherman had already scored a combined 48 points in the first two rounds of that tournament.
“He had nothing left to give,” was the way WVU head coach Bob Huggins described Sherman’s game against Clemson.
Getting to this point has been a transformation of sorts for Sherman, who explained he was mostly a catch-and-shoot 3-point shooter while in junior college at Collin (Texas) College.
“Now, I know a lot of people are going to try and run me off the line,” Sherman said. “I have this mid-range game, this post-up game that I like getting into. I like getting to the free-throw line. That’s how you get yourself going. I haven’t been shooting the best from the three early on this season, so getting to the free-throw line and getting to the mid-range definitely helps.”
While there are still 25 games left in the regular season, Sherman is on an early pace to become the first WVU player to average 20 points a game since Drew Schifino in 2003.
“He wants to win,” Huggins said of Sherman. “He’s a great competitor and he’s really worked hard at his game.
“He has the ability to get his feet down maybe as well as Da’Sean (Butler) did. Da’Sean’s biggest asset was how he could get his feet down and get his legs into shots. Taz has kind of developed the same thing.”
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