MORGANTOWN — For whatever reason, it somehow became a thing last season that whenever ESPN analyst Fran Fraschilla covered a WVU men’s basketball game, he was somehow going to work Taz Sherman’s potential into the broadcast.
Time and again, Fraschilla would mention that Sherman had the option of coming back for a fifth year and that he would only be 22 years old during that extra year and had the opportunity to develop into one of the top guards in the Big 12.
“Coming back, I heard someone say over and over that I could be one of the best guards in the Big 12,” Sherman said with a smile during Big 12 media day in October, as Fraschilla sat directly next to him. “He knows a little something.”
Fraschilla responded by one-upping his original take, “I think you could be one of the best guards in the country.”
So, here we are some two months later. Sherman is tied for 10th in the country in scoring at 21.2 points per game. He’s averaging more rebounds than he did over his first two seasons. He leads the Mountaineers (8-1) in assists.
About the only thing Sherman hasn’t done for this team is sell the programs and the hot dogs.
“He has made so many strides,” WVU head coach Bob Huggins said Friday. “He’s got a great knack of getting himself free to get a jump shot. He’s got to be one of the better players in our league. If not, the top two or three.”
After watching Sherman go for 23 points and playing all 40 minutes, as WVU took down 15th-ranked Connecticut, there’s little doubt he’s become one of the top players around the country.
If the question now becomes rather or not Sherman can continue to play at this high level for another 30-some games, we’ve got your best reasons why that’s possible.
Chip on the shoulder
The old something-to-prove motivation is alive and well within Sherman.
You’re talking about a young man who began his college career in junior college, but not because he didn’t have the grades, which is the main reason why athletes go to junior college.
Outside of some smaller Division II schools, there was no one lining up to have Sherman sign on the dotted line when he was playing at Fort Bend Thurgood Marshall High School outside of Houston.
Sherman went to junior college as a way of betting on himself, to show that he could play at a higher level.
Guys don’t forget their small beginnings when they’re in JUCO. The bus rides. The cold pizza for dinner after games, which are played in front of 30 people to begin with.
Huggins mentioned the other day one of the things that made Joe Alexander work so hard was because no one wanted him.
No one knew about Alexander when he was coming out of high school and most colleges had decided to pass on him after he attended Hargrave Military Academy for prep school.
The same thing can be found in Sherman, who has spent the better part of three years at WVU going from being just a shooter to becoming a well-rounded player.
The kid is smart and mature
Following the UConn win, Sherman had the best opportunity to call out those who had doubted the Mountaineers.
He could have easily pulled out the no-one-believed-in-us card or gone on some rant how WVU has been disrespected by the poll voters.
Instead, Sherman added intrigue and some real thought to the conversation on just how good this WVU team really is.
“For people who were saying stuff, saying, ‘How good are they?’ You couldn’t really disagree with it,” he said. “We’ve been up and down. I think a lot of people were wondering what our identity was. I think tonight showed our identity a little bit.”
He understands the game and really sees a bigger picture, rather than just letting emotion getting the best of him.
To me, those are the kinds of players who are best prepared for success.
A star without the star mentality
Every time Sherman has been asked about his scoring this season, he begins every answer with his mentality of trying to get his teammates shots early in the game to get them going.
That’s not just some sort of line, at least I don’t believe it to be with Sherman.
Until the game is on the line, he rarely goes hunting for shots.
He’s attempted 20 shots in just one game this season, and that was against Pitt, in which every WVU player had some type of season high against one of the worst Pitt teams ever known.
He leads the team with 29 assists, and by the time the regular season ends on March 5 against TCU, all bets are on that he’ll still be leading in that category.
It’s so much easier for teammates to get behind and follow a leader who isn’t trying to make a statement each game on how great of a scorer they are.
If that leader is also sharing the ball and rebounding it and playing defense, guys can get behind that.
So, maybe Fraschilla was onto something last season. He saw potential in Sherman that the rest of us did not. As to whether Sherman can keep it up for an entire season, we now believe it’s a near certainty.
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