Now comfortable in his own skin, Chase Harler is glad he stuck it out with West Virginia

MORGANTOWN, W. Va. — The Senior Day moment always comes so fast and that is no different for West Virginia senior guard Chase Harler, who will play in his final home game inside the WVU Coliseum at 1 p.m. Saturday, as the Mountaineers host fourth-ranked Baylor.

“I feel like I should still have a couple of years left, because I didn’t play a whole lot my first two years,” he said. “We’ll see how I how I react (today). I’m not sure how that’s going to go down.”

Harler, along with seniors Logan Routt and Jermaine Haley will play their final home game for the Mountaineers (20-10, 8-9 Big 12), who can still reach as high as the No. 3 seed in the Big 12 tournament with an upset of the Bears (26-3, 15-2).

In his own words, Harler calls his days at WVU like riding a roller coaster.

It began with two runs to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament, as Harler played behind the likes of Jevon Carter, Daxter Miles Jr. and Tarik Phillip, only to see it all crash to the ground with a 15-21 season as a junior.

Truth be told, Harler was almost never there for the crash.

After playing in a back-up role for two seasons, Harler, a Moundsville native and West Virginia’s Gatorade Player of the Year as a senior out of Wheeling Central, entertained thoughts of transferring.

Former WVU standout Joe Mazzulla was still coaching at Fairmont State. West Liberty was averaging 100 points per game and making deep runs in the Division II tournaments.

Harler could have made a nice addition to either roster back then.

“I’m not sure if he wanted to transfer more than people around him wanted him to do it,” WVU head coach Bob Huggins said. “They were telling him to go to West Liberty, which was scoring 100 points and Chase could have got 30 of them. He wasn’t interested in that. He was more interested at playing and being successful at the highest level.”

When the two met after the 2017-18 season, Harler’s question for Huggins was simple.

“He came in and basically asked me what I thought he should do?” Huggins said. “I’m like, ‘Chase, you could own this state.’ Come in here and be a good player and everybody knows you. Everywhere you go, they’ll know you and everybody will have appreciated what you’ve done. He could have gone to West Liberty and averaged 25 or 30 a game, but no one would care. He said, ‘O.K.’ and walked out and never brought it up again.”

Don’t mistake, that, though, with being an easy decision to make.

“There has definitely been some low points to my career,” Harler said. “Sometimes I think we all kind of forget the position that we’re in. We’re playing Division I basketball. I’m playing for West Virginia and I’m from West Virginia. That’s an unbelievable honor. Sometimes I got to carried away with how I performed.

“Everyone wants to play well, but sometimes you have to take a step back and appreciate what you have. At times when I thought this wasn’t for me, I had to take a step back and realize this was a dream come true for me. That helped me get through the tough times.”

It took Harler just three years to earn his undergraduate degree in business administration.

This June, he’ll complete his master’s degree in sport management. Harler said the school will keep him on scholarship through the summer in order to keep him from paying his own tuition.

What then? Maybe the opportunity will arise for him to play some as a pro overseas.

“But if the opportunity doesn’t present itself, I definitely want to get into coaching,” he said. “That’s what I want to make my career as.”

Before then, it’s one more home game against Baylor and then another trip to Kansas City for the Big 12 tournament.

And one more trip to the NCAA tournament, which seemed like it was worlds away after last season.

“I think the end of last year was sort of a glimpse of what we could do this year,” Harler said. “We’ve had some high points and some low points. I don’t think we had anyone who was expecting to have the same kind of year as we did last year. We made it a point not to have that again.”

He’ll leave with only one regret, which is that he wasn’t able to grasp the bigger picture earlier in his career.

“Early on, when I missed a shot, I would let it get in my head,” Harler said. “I would constantly be thinking about how I was playing rather than just moving on. As I got older and more mature, I guess you could say I came out of my shell and became more comfortable in my own skin. My only regret is that that didn’t happen sooner for me.”

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