West Virginia looks for sophomore leap for RB Jahiem White
Like in life, sometimes in coaching the best teacher is making mistakes.
And while you want to avoid it if at all possible, it does provide blueprints on how to handle certain situations.
That is the case with handling the sophomore season for Jahiem White after what unfolded with CJ Donaldson the year before after coming off a strong freshman campaign.
“As a staff we did as good of a job preparing CJ for that,” head coach Neal Brown said. “He really burst on the scene as a freshman and got injured in the TCU game his freshman year and I don’t think we prepared him from January on for what it was going to take to be able to repeat that performance and improve.”
Donaldson rushed for 526 yards and 8 touchdowns on just 87 carries but then followed that up by rushing for 798 yards and 11 scores on 171 carries as a sophomore.
That isn’t a down year by any means, but the goal is to make an even bigger leap which is what the coaching staff is focusing on with not only Donaldson but when it comes to the upcoming sophomore season for Jahiem White.
White rushed for 842 yards and 4 scores on just 109 carries as a true freshman, an average of 7.7 per tote. That’s despite only playing sparingly in the first seven games of the season. The true freshman only played a total of 275 offensive snaps but made them count.
“The change-up is that you learn,” he said. “You make mistakes, you learn And so with Jahiem it’s been a challenge because the reality of a sophomore slump is those happen a lot.”
That means hitting the issue head-on on and Brown has talked with White specifically about looking at his numbers from a season ago and if he had the same numbers would he be happy as a sophomore?
“The answer is no,” Brown said.
But even with that Brown believes that White might even be flying under the radar some as he points out that he wasn’t asked about him at Big 12 media days.
“Think he’s special. He can do a lot, now he’s maturing as a player and as a guy so there’s a lot of room for improvement, but he can do a lot of things. Not a lot of people talking about him. I didn’t get one question about him at media days. He’s flying under the radar, and we’ve mentioned those things,” Brown said.
White has already spoken about the need to finish plays with both speed and acceleration which cost him several scores a season ago. That has been a primary focus for him to continue to make strides.
“My main thing was finishing runs after the plays are done and going 30 yards past the defense to get game-like reps,” White said.
But thus far his teammates have been impressed with how he has handled his second season.
“Jahiem is one of the most electrifying players in the country,” quarterback Garrett Greene said.
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