MORGANTOWN, W. Va. — The first thing Sean McNeil tells you about his basketball game is, “My story is a little different.”
There may be no better way to begin any story about McNeil, now a 6-foot-4 guard at West Virginia, who will make his Division I regular-season debut at 7 p.m. Friday, when the Mountaineers host Akron.
Two years ago, McNeil wasn’t even on a basketball roster, having dropped out of Division II Bellarmine University in Louisville after just one week of classes.
He spent a year enrolled at Gateway Community and Technical College, a campus without an athletics program, where his only action was in open gyms at Northern Kentucky University or during his own individual workouts at Cooper (Union, Ky.) High School, where he once guided the Jaguars to a runner-up finish at the state high school tournament as a senior.
“That year I left Bellarmine, I had that year to really work on my game and focus on what I wasn’t doing well,” McNeil said.
Even his story on how he became known for his shooting skills is unique.
“To be honest, I’ve been a shooter since I was a little kid,” McNeil said. “I say that, because I was chubby and I couldn’t do anything else but shoot. My dad kind of taught me how to shoot and got me going with the game of basketball.”
In the year that followed his basketball hiatus, McNeil went from limbo to becoming a junior-college All-American and leading all junior-college schools in scoring (29.7 ppg) at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio.
McNeil’s start with the Mountaineers has also seen some setbacks. When the team visited Spain this summer in an exhibition tour, he missed the final game with a severe case of food poisoning after playing well in the first two games of the tour.
“He played well in Spain and then got sick,” Huggins said. “He was really sick and lost a bunch of weight. With all of things going on, it was hard for him to get back to 100 percent health. It’s just happened. In the last week and a half, he’s been full go. I think he’s got a great future here, but we’ve got to keep him healthy.”
McNeil said he’s also dealing with a slight hamstring pull and also had a concussion earlier in the preseason.
“I had a little hamstring issue and a concussion that kept me out of four or five days,” McNeil said. “The hamstring still bothers me. It is what it is. It’s just sore.”
In 16 minutes against Duquesne in last week’s 78-70 charity exhibition victory, McNeil shot 4 of 9 from the floor, 2 for 5 from 3-point range, and scored 12 points.
“He’s got a great touch and he can get his own shot,” Huggins said. “He’s going to score points. I thought he was way better defensively than what he’s been.”
His play was stronger in the second half, when McNeil showed the ability to drive to the basket, as well as shoot from the outside.
“It took a little bit to get comfortable and for things to start feeling natural again,” McNeil said. “As time went on, I felt more comfortable and I think my play showed that.
“I just stopped thinking about it and stopped playing nervous and just went out and played basketball.”
With so much adversity now behind him, McNeil is now looking forward to a career where he can simply just play basketball.
“I tell everybody that I love it (at WVU) more now than when I knew I was going to commit here,” McNeil said. “Not only the basketball stuff, but the people are great here. The atmosphere here is everything I could have asked for and more.”
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