'All About Basketball': Jalen Bridges' Basketball Career Has Always Been About Learning

Jalen Bridges has learned a thing or two over the years — how to get better, how to listen and how to turn it on.

Dale Sparks - WVU Basketball

There once was a time when a young Jalen Bridges might have thought his future was in baseball.

The WVU forward used to drag his bat bag around the ballpark in Bridgeport, West Virginia, for his little league games, maybe one day thinking about the big leagues.

But then he picked up a basketball.

“As soon as he touched a basketball, he didn't want to play baseball anymore,” said Bridges’ father, Cory. “He ended up actually quitting baseball, and then from that early age on it was all about basketball.”

Cory Bridges said that was around the time that Jalen was 7 or 8. It’s been constant work ever since, and that’s led Jalen to be a dynamic part of West Virginia’s men’s basketball team as it looks to make a run in the NCAA Tournament, which kicks off Friday with a game against Morehead State.

It’s been all basketball, all the time for Bridges from the time he was a young kid. It’d be hard not to be around the game when your father was a state champion in high school and then went on the make the most of a college career.

But Cory said he never pressured Jalen into playing the sport that could one day actually take him to the big leagues. But once he got into it on his own, it was go time.

The younger Bridges started playing travel ball at an early age, and by the time he was in fifth grade, the family moved back to Fairmont, West Virginia from just down the road in Bridgeport.

That’s when Jalen linked up with Zyon Dobbs, his eventual running mate at Fairmont Senior High School when the Polar Bears played for four-straight state championships while winning two of them.

Dobbs, who now plays his basketball at Fairmont State University, said the connection was instant.

“It was kind of right away. Our dads are friends and they were our coaches,” Dobbs said. “We started to click as soon as we met each other.”

By seventh grade, the two were headlining a travel team that was about to play in a national tournament after getting better each year for three straight years to get to that point.

But they ran into some buzzsaws in Memphis.

“They got a rude awakening, because they were playing against kids that were already 6-5, 6-6 in the seventh grade. We didn't do too well,” Cory Bridges said. “They took some lumps and they learned from it. They knew they had to get a whole lot better and keep working.”

That became a trend for Jalen Bridges — taking lumps, learning and getting better.

In high school, Bridges played for a loaded Fairmont Senior squad. He saw minutes as a reserve during his freshman season, which led to the first of two state titles.

But the way coach David Retton runs his program is simple — you play a role, and you earn minutes. Bridges and Dobbs both fit that mold and worked alongside older players until it was their time to take over the team.

By this time, Bridges had grown from a lanky 3-point shooter into a 6-foot-6 wing who could spread the floor and get to the rim.

Things started coming together for Bridges after he played in a showcase in Las Vegas after his junior year and subsequently picked up offers from Marshall and Samford. That’s when the light bulb clicked. That’s when he knew he needed to take it up.

“Those two offers just opened his eyes up,” Cory Bridges said. “He started getting more hungry and wanting more. He always told me, ‘I’m not playing D2.’”

So, he got in the gym with Christian Kezmarsky, out of Pittsburgh, and Shammgod Wells, a former record-setting point guard and assistant coach at Fairmont State and current IUP assistant.

“Those two guys were able to pull something out of Jalen that we weren't able to pull out of him,” Cory said. “He became a lot more focused, just trying to separate himself and stay in the gym. You could just tell that he was changing — his mentality and how he was approaching stuff, it was business-like.”

Wells spent plenty of time being able to see Bridges game develop from the time he was a middle schooler and on through high school as the FSU players frequently checked out local games in their free time.

Once he got his hands on him in the training room, Wells wanted to instill confidence and let Bridges bring out the best he had.

“Jalen was always a shy kid, so the biggest thing was trying to get him to really believe in his talent. Don’t get me wrong, he knows he is good, but he craves to get better,” Wells said. “With that, he is humble. The side of him that I wanted to bring out was that killer, that Mamba mentality, that confidence.”

All of the training in the world could have helped Bridges improve, but Wells said it was one thing that really set it all in motion.

“He won’t admit it, but I had to play him one-on-one one day and I beat him,” Wells said. “After that, he started taking everything personal. He started wanting to dominate every matchup and wanted to try to put his stamp on every matchup and every game. I think when he went AAU and played top players, he realized he could play with those guys. And if they were NBA prospects, why wasn't he?”

From there, Bridges worked and worked and worked. He juggled decisions of going to prep school. His stock was rising. He was named the top player in the state of West Virginia his senior season. The itch was getting stronger.

Bridges’ father was pushing him to go to prep school, to have the opportunity to re-class and play against guys his own height that could be better than he was.

He’d taken some college visits already and didn’t have a decision in mind. He’d visited WVU before, but Cory Bridges said the team was a little dysfunctional at the time. Still, he decided to visit Morgantown once more.

This visit came after a roster rehaul, and it was like a whole new team Cory said.

“It was a culture change the next time we came up,” he said. “You could just tell everybody was on the same page.”

Jalen pulled the trigger and committed to the Mountaineers, deciding to redshirt his first year on campus.

Since then, he's done nothing but work his tail off, according to his coaches and teammates. That hard work has led to a usual role in WVU’s starting five.

“He’s really worked at it. He’s a guy who gets in the gym and works at what you ask him to work on,” WVU head coach Bob Huggins said. “The other thing is he knows what he can do and what he can’t, so he really tries to accentuate the positive and stay away from the negative.”

Jalen this season has played in 26 games with 17 starts, averaging 5.6 points and 3.3 rebounds while shooting 48.6% from the field and 40.7% from 3-point range.

Over a recent seven-game stretch from Feb. 9 to March 4, he averaged 10.3 points and 6.6 rebounds per outing. He dropped a season-high 22 points and 12 rebounds against TCU during that stretch, too.

“As the season has gone along, I’ve gotten way more comfortable out there,” Jalen Bridges said after that TCU game. “The speed of the game has slowed down a little bit for me now. I’m letting the game come to me, and I’m trying to be as active as I can to help my team win.”

Having that redshirt year has really paid off, both Jalen and Huggins have admitted. His teammates, too, have noted how the intensity that he’s picked up over the last two years is transferring onto the court.

“Jalen is slowly becoming the player that he was for us last year in practice. He was one of the most aggressive guys for us, the way he was attacking the offensive glass, defensive glass, he was going after every ball trying to tip-dunk it,” guard Sean McNeil said. “For him to be a freshman still, he’s going to be an unbelievable player. What he’s doing right now for us, it’s really good and really special.”

Forward Derek Culver said Jalen is considered a “go-to-guy … because he’s always going to be ready to score a bucket.”

Point guard Jordan McCabe even said that Jalen just might be the most NBA-ready player on the WVU roster.

And Huggins has never been short on praise for the in-state product.

“I don’t know that he has a ceiling,” the coach said “He has good feet. He can pass the ball. He obviously is going to end up being a three-man and being out on the perimeter guarding and passing and handling the ball and those kind of things. He has plenty of things he can work on to continue to expand his game, but the great thing about J.B. is he does what you ask him to do, and he really tries to excel at what he’s asked to do. That doesn’t happen a whole lot anymore.”

For those closest to him, though, none of these things are secrets.

These scenarios are all things that Bridges and Dobbs used to sit around and dream about when they would work out together. Some of them are likely still topic of conversation for both players and friends.

But Bridges finds himself in unchartered waters as the Mountaineers prepare for tipoff Friday night — playing minutes in an NCAA Tournament game.

Dobbs, who just wrapped up a stint in the NCAA Division II Tournament, could have given his friend some advice, but he chose to let him tackled it on his own, maybe even take some lumps, learn from it and get better.

“Jalen doesn't need it,” Dobbs said. “He’s ready to go.” 

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