Javon Small's stellar season continues

It isn’t “stop the presses” stuff, though, and that’s what got me to thinking.

Just how good is this first — and only — basketball season for Small at West Virginia?

The more I thought about it, the more it grew in stature. No, he wasn’t scoring like Jerry West but he is averaging 19 points a game. Only 16 players in all of WVU history had averaged more in a season, headed by — no, not Jerry West — but Ron “Fritz” Williams, who averaged 29.42 points a game in 1972.

Only three players this century had averaged more than Small has to date and that would be Kevin Pittsnogle, Kevin Jones and Drew Schifino, the only one to average 20 points a game.

But Small, as evidenced on Sunday, isn’t just a scorer. He dished out a career high of 9 assists in that Cincinnati game and leads the team averaging 5.1 assists per game.

Oh, yeah, you can toss in the fact that he is second on the team in rebounding with 4.7 per game.

What’s more, he is shooting free throws at 88.1%, which is second for a single season in WVU history to the 88.9% made by Sean McNeil four years ago.

But McNeil, during his full season, took less than half as many free throws as Small has, and there’s still a big chunk of this season left and Small may just be able to catch McNeil.

So he scores, he makes plays, he rebounds, he shoots free throws.

He’s putting together classic numbers, yet he’s doing it on a team that doesn’t score many points.

Think about it, WVU ranks 15th out of 16 teams in the Big 12 in scoring with 69.7 points per game. The Mountaineers are 13th in field-goal percentage and 12th in 3-point shooting.

And, to add misery to their 3-point shooting, despite not being very good at it, the Mountaineers keep firing away from 3, ranking second in the conference in the number of attempts. They have missed 374 3-point attempts.

All of that exaggerates small’s value to the team. What’s more, the second best offensive player was Tucker DeVries, who played the first seven games and has been out since then with a shoulder problem and, while no one is really saying so, he probably will not be back this season.

What makes Small’s accomplishments so special is that he’s not out there trying to set records, usually just saying “I do what I can to help the team win games.”

He really isn’t hung up on individual numbers.

How good is Small?

Well, he leads the Big 12 in scoring, is fourth in assists and is ninth in steals, tied with teammate Sencire Harris. That free-throw shooting percentage is fourth in the conference.

What’s more, he leads the conference in minutes played, a tireless workhorse who plays both ends of the floor and all phases of the game.

So should he finish this season out as it has gone so far, where will he rank among WVU players?

He’s not West, but who is?

But you can put him there with the modern guards, with Jevon Carter, Miles McBride and Juwan Staten.

Compare him to Carter, McBride and Staten and his senior season and they look like this:

Player Scoring FG% 3P% FT% Asst TO Steals

Small 19.0 42.5% 35.9% 88.1% 5.1 2.8 1.8

Carter 17.3 42.2% 39.3% 85.8% 6.7 2.7 3.2

McBride 15.9 43.1% 41.4% 81.3% 4.8 1.8 3.1

Staten 18.1 48.6% 40.0% 71.9 6.2 2.2 1.3

Certainly it’s safe to say that Small is having one of the best all-around seasons for a guard at WVU in the modern era and if he were to slip a triple-double in there it would be out of the question.

There have been only four triple doubles in WVU history: Rod Thorn vs. St. Bonaventure in 1962 (28 points, 11 assists, 13 rebounds); Levi Phillips vs. Virginia Tech, in 1974 (21-13-10), Jim Scottile vs. NYU in 1952 (19-10-10) and Jerome Anders vs. Boston U. in 1975 (18-10-10).

The deal is that all of the players other than Small, among the best of those who played at WVU, had probably at least one other “go to” player while Small is more on his own out there.

The situation has resulted in a season-long search (since Tucker DeVries was injured) looking for another consistent scorer to take some of the heat off Small.

He has handled it without complaint and with an unselfish approach to the game that has kept him from compiling eye-popping numbers as the Mountaineers have not tried to be something they aren’t, simply doing what they can do and resting more on their defense than their offense to put together what figures to be a winning season that takes them to the NCAA Tournament.