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Ka’Raun White ready to harness bowl momentum, train against Kyzir

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Ka’Raun White is in the trough, still feeling the reverb from his last game while waiting not so patiently for the next one.

On Jan. 2 he burned Arizona State for 116 receiving yards in the Cactus Bowl, highlighted by a season-long 53-yarder. That night felt like a breakthrough moment, even though White took some kidding from big brother Kevin about not scoring any touchdowns in a game full of them.

After the breakthrough, however, came the break. Winter weightlifting. Off-season conditioning. Waiting to play ball again.

“The bowl game was the most yards I had all season and then I had to go back in the weight room,” he said.

Eight months and one day will have passed between the bowl game and the 2016 opener against Missouri. But momentum is what a player makes of it, and White says he draws upon his success in Phoenix often.

He’s among the standouts at West Virginia’s spring practice, productive enough that coach Dana Holgorsen referred to him among a group of “good, solid starters” last Saturday. Next comes the relocated spring game to be staged at the Greenbrier, where fans will get their first extended glimpse of White since he burst through the Arizona State secondary.

White, who was a 22-year-old sophomore last season, anticipated greeting success much earlier in 2015, when the wideout spot opposite Shelton Gibson emerged as a closely watched position battle in preseason camp. Explosive true freshman Jovon Durante won the job early, before inconsistent hands and inconsistent grades tempered his season.

White didn’t play at all during the first four games while dealing with the remnants of a left shoulder injury incurred during August. He said medical staff initially feared “a chipped bone,” though a less severe diagnosis allowed him to finally get on the field during the overtime loss to Oklahoma State on Oct 10.

White recorded his first two catches the following week at Baylor, and two weeks later he caught five more against Texas Tech, showing strong hands in traffic. That led to his first WVU start Nov. 14 against Texas, a game that feature three short, possession-style catches before another injury shelved White for the Kansas and Iowa State wins.

Only a bit player in the regular-season finale at Kansas State, he earned the bowl start when Durante was ruled academically ineligible.

White hopes that night in the desert foreshadowed something bigger, something fans might call Kevin-like, though Ka’Raun downplays the comparisons. After all, he’s more than inch shorter than big brother and about 20 pounds slimmer. And there’s a baby brother on the way to Morgantown.

Safety Kyzir White, the highest-rated of all the White brothers to come out of Lackawanna College, is scheduled to arrive in May. Cue the sibling rivalry.

“We’re going to be competing a lot,” Ka’Raun said. “He likes to do one-on-one drills and see if he can guard me. At Lackawanna they always had us competing a lot I’m sure they’re going to do the same thing here in camp.”





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