MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The last time Jermaine Haley can recall scoring 28 points in a game was probably in high school.
 
And the last time he took 20 shots in a game? 
 
That would be never.
 
Haley's evolution from a facilitator and distributor to a shooter was on full display late in Wednesday night's 90-75 victory over Iowa State when coach Bob Huggins called timeout with 6:05 remaining and the 25^th-ranked Cyclones chipping away at West Virginia's double-digit lead.
 
The guy he wanted to have the ball in his hands was Haley, who delivered with two key points on another drive to the basket.
 
The message the West Virginia coaches have been preaching to Haley ever since his arrival from Odessa College last summer is shoot, shoot, shoot even though he's always been conditioned to pass, pass, pass.
 
"When Jermaine first got here I remember coach (Larry) Harrison yelling 20 times at practice to shoot the ball," teammate Jordan McCabe recalled. "I'm thinking, 'At his frame and his ability to do everything and his mechanics, shot-wise, if you've got to tell a dude like that to shoot that's something else.' He does constantly look for the extra pass and now that he's scoring more, that makes him even more dangerous."
 
Going all the way back to his high school days in Vancouver, British Columbia, Haley was always a pass-first and shoot-second type of player. Actually, it was more like pass-first, pass-second and then shoot the ball, but Huggins is finally getting him to think a little bit differently now.
 
When West Virginia was going through a difficult stretch of games struggling to score, Huggins wanted Haley to become more assertive with the basketball in his hands going to the rim where his 6-foot-7-inch, 215-pound frame makes him difficult for smaller defenders to stop.
 
"They just tell me to push when I can and when I push I always look to get to the rim first, and then hit somebody," Haley explained. "(Wednesday night) I saw opportunities to score, and I just took them."

Despite playing out on the perimeter, Haley might be the Mountaineers' best finisher at the rim right now. He seems fairly comfortable scoring against contact, even against guys much bigger than he is.
 
"That's the stuff I always worked on when I was younger," Haley said. "I always had a lot of little guys on me playing point guard, but I like playing off the ball because it gives me a chance to run in transition and get a full head of steam at the rim."
 
Haley had 20 by halftime against the Cyclones and the way he was getting to the basket against smaller players was almost reminiscent of the way All-American Da'Sean Butler used to do it for the Mountaineers.
 
Late in the game, Haley was thinking 30 points on West Virginia's final possession, and Huggins gave him a head nod to go for it, but he bounced the ball off his foot going to the rim and turned the ball over.
 
That's one of the few mistakes he made against Iowa State, or the last four games for that matter. Those last four games since scoring 13 at Baylor have been tremendous. He got 18 in a triple-overtime victory over TCU and had 23 in a road loss at Oklahoma last Saturday.
 
McCabe, too, is performing much better by averaging 18.8 points over that same span of games, including a season-high 25 in the TCU win. 
 
Since Baylor, the two backcourt players have combined to score 157 points and consequently, West Virginia is averaging 87.5 points in its last four games. During another four-game stretch before that, all blowout losses, WVU failed to score more than 53 in any game.
 
"Jermaine has been really good over the last three or four games and for Jordan, I think it takes a while to get used to the fact that he's playing against men," Huggins explained. "He was used to playing against kids, and you can't get away with some of the things he could get away with in high school. He's learned that, and he wants to play. He understands if he takes care of the ball, delivers the ball and makes open shots, he's going to play."
 
"Huggs doesn't like it when I dribble the air out of the ball, but he really doesn't like it when I turn it over. I've figured that out," McCabe said.
 
McCabe's also figured out that he's a much better player when he's simply playing and reacting and not overthinking things.
 
"It's a lot less thinking and a lot more playing, that's all I can attest it to," McCabe said. "I was thinking way too much before because of the guys I've got around me. It's easier to not just think anymore and go play basketball like we've all been taught to do."
 
Haley believes it's a matter of the players having more confidence in themselves. He said he's a much more confident player now than he was a month ago, mainly because this is the third school he's played at in the last three years.
 
"I feel good right now, and hopefully I can continue doing this for the rest of the season and next season," he said. "This has kind of been an awkward year for me because I've just tried to feel out everything, and coming to a new school not everything is going to go your way right away but you've just got to stick with the process."
 
The air has also been cleared within the locker room. The recent departures have really put the team in a much better place chemistry-wise, even if depth is not ideal.
 
McCabe explains, "We're not dealing with the things … when you put any energy at all into off-the-court things on the court is just not going to be where it needs to be," he said diplomatically. "That's any team dynamic. If you're not 100-percent focused, and in this conference if you're not 100-percent focused on how we can get ourselves to click the right way on the floor, it's just a recipe for disaster."
 
"We're a different team," Huggins added. "We're playing guys now we didn't play before. We're playing a bunch of young guys that like each other and play well together and want to win."
 
With Haley and McCabe stabilizing things in the backcourt, that is affording Huggins the ability to make more in-game adjustments and manage possessions much better than he was able to do just a couple of weeks ago.
 
We saw that several times during Wednesday night's victory, West Virginia's 12^thof the season.
 
"You've got to have guys that want to play together, and you've got to have guys that want to win," Huggins explained. "You've got to have guys who will share the ball. We pass the ball now and we didn't pass the ball before. It makes a big difference."
 
And Haley, the guy used to sometimes passing the ball too much, is learning how to hang onto it and do more of the shooting and less of the passing. 
 
If Huggins is to be believed, Haley could be hoisting up another 20 shots on Saturday afternoon at Oklahoma State.
 
"He better get used to it," his coach predicted.
 
Tipoff against the Cowboys in Stillwater is scheduled for 4 p.m. The game will be televised nationally on ESPNews.