The Super Six: Area freshmen have emerged as standouts in rookie seasons

Kent McBride has a basketball legacy few in Wyoming County can compete with.

He led Wyoming East, a consolidation of Mullens and Pineville, to its first basketball state championship as a player, earning first team all-state honors and launching himself into a basketball career that saw him earn Mountain East Conference Coach of the Year honors in 2015.

But he’s honest about his development as a younger player.

“I didn’t play at Wyoming East my freshman year in high school,” McBride, now the head coach at East, said. “I couldn’t have done it. 
You look at Talan Muscari, he’s probably 140 pounds and he lifts weights all the time. I was 112 (pounds). I mean, I couldn’t hardly hold my shirt on my body. Guys even around the area, I mean, you look at Shady, they got freshmen playing.

“Guys are training differently and they’re able to develop faster, so I think it’s good because I think now we have better players than we had. And I’ll be the first to tell you I went back and watched my state championship game, good Lord, that was some bad, hard-to-watch basketball. We couldn’t score. We couldn’t pass.”

The question arose after the significant contributions of starters Muscari and Broc Johnson, both of whom are freshmen. Muscari runs the show as the point guard, averaging a team-high six assists per game while Johnson is second in scoring (13 ppg) and first in field goal percentage (57 percent).

They’ve helped revive a program that’s made just three state tournament appearances in the last 10 years.

But Muscari and Johnson aren’t abnormalities. In fact they’re just two of six players that have shifted the landscape of basketball in the area throughout their freshman seasons.

The other four play in Raleigh County.

At Independence Brock Green, a former teammate of Muscari and Johnson’s at Mullens, is the Patriots’ third leading scorer at 15.2 ppg, averaging 11.9 rebounds and 2.5 assists to lead the team in both categories.

Across the county fellow freshmen Eli Sexton (7 ppg) and Gabe Short (6.3 ppg) have proven to be key pieces for a Shady Spring program that’s been to four consecutive Class AAA title games, having won two over that span. Sexton has moved into the starting lineup down the stretch while Short has cemented himself as the sixth man. Both have started at points for the No. 2-ranked team in Class AAA.

Not to be outdone, Liam Daniels at Liberty has emerged as Liberty’s top scorer, averaging 15 point per game while leading the team in steals per game (2.4) and giving the Raiders a foundational piece to build around.

The class is reminiscent of the guard class of 2020 which locally featured all-staters McQuade Canada (Wyoming East), Braden Crews (Bluefield), Luke LeRose (Nicholas County/Shady Spring) and Tommy Williams (Shady Spring).

But the six are already making waves locally, ready to take the postseason stage on Friday. This season’s just been a prelude of what’s to come over the next three years.

“I was talking to a guy today and we were just talking about how younger players are so much better than younger players were even at my age because they train differently now,” McBride said. “They start training at nine. They’re in the gym and they just start preparing their body earlier and those guys did. I think that’s a generational thing. I told somebody, I was telling the coworker today ‘In 2002, I couldn’t play at Concord right now, no chance.’ Not big enough, not physical enough but the game has evolved that way.”

In an increasingly competitive and globalized sport, the competition has never been fiercer. In the old guard freshmen were mostly expected to wait their turn in favor of older players. In some counties such as Raleigh, high schools were grades 10 through 12 with the middle schools featuring ninth graders until the turn of the century.

Now it all boils down to how well you can play, learn and adapt.

At Shady, freshmen playing meaningful minutes has become the norm and it’s all merit-based. Braden Chapman, a three-time first team all-stater and current standout at WVU Tech, started as a freshman for a Shady Spring team that earned the No. 1 ranking in January of 2020 while his brother Cole was the team’s sixth man.

The following year Ammar Maxwell became the sixth man for Shady as a freshman, helping the Tigers win a state title 2021 and again in 2024 as the all-state captain. In the 2021-22 season Jack Williams started at guard as a freshman for a Shady team that returned six of its top seven players from the ’21 title team. A knee injury in December ended his season prematurely but it was an affirmation that Shady Spring head coach Ronnie Olson is always going to put the best five on the floor.

Olson’s been the most reliant on younger players throughout his career and his faith has been rewarded with two state championships.

“They’re high school ready,” Olson said. “We played against the kids from Wyoming East and Brock (Green) and if you look at them all, physically they’re all ready to play the game. I feel like with as much basketball and as some of the guys have been in the gym, whether it be for football or basketball, but they’re all physically ready to play the game. I think that’s the difference. If you’re physically ready, you can immediately be an impact player at the high school level as a freshman.”

While the six super freshmen are the headliners, they’re not the only impact rookies across the area contributing. At PikeView Zayden Farmer has emerged as an important rotational piece for the Panthers while Jaxson Workman (Liberty) and Bradyn Waldron (Westside) provide key contributions for their respective programs that aren’t always reflected in the box score.

Opposing teams are aware of the impact players as well, making them a part of their game plans. When Independence secured a key win over PikeView earlier in the season, the Panthers put an emphasis on denying Green and muddying his passing lanes. A talented passer out of the high post, he constantly drew attention, opening up efficient shot attempts for his teammates. The result was a 62 percent (29-of-47) shooting night for the Patriots with Green going 5-of-5 from the field.

“Isn’t it incredible the attention that a freshman is getting from another team?” Independence head coach Shawn Jenkins asked.

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The youngsters have emerged as go-to players in high-leverage situations.

Traveling to Logan for a Saturday night matinee on March 1 with state tournament seeding implications on the line, Wyoming East gave up a game-tying 3 to the Wildcats with under 20 seconds to play. Muscari quickly regrouped the team up the floor, hitting fellow freshman Johnson on the baseline for the game-winning layup with seven seconds to play.

If there was any doubt, it was a testament that the Class of 2028 had arrived, potentially setting a precedent for future players.

“I think the game evolving is making it way more way more pleasing to watch,” McBride said. “It’s way more fun because you have more skilled basketball players. So it’s a great thing and my son’s 10 and we’re in the gym three days a week. I wasn’t in gym three days a week or 10 years old.”

For the time being, the future is now.

Email: tylerjackson@playsheetsports.com and follow on X @tjack94