Tyson Bagent gave thought to seeing how his game would stack up at the highest level of college football.
But Bagent, Shepherd’s record-setting quarterback, has withdrawn his name from the NCAA Transfer Portal and will return to play a fourth season for the Rams.
Bagent entered the ever-popular transfer portal January 7 and visited both West Virginia and Maryland, before opting to remain a Ram.
Bagent, who has two seasons of eligibility remaining, has started all three seasons he’s played at Shepherd. As a junior, the 6-foot-3, 215-pound quarterback garnered the Harlon Hill Award as the most valuable player in all of Division II.
He led Shepherd to a 13-2 season and appearance in a national semifinal in 2021 by completing 391-of-579 passes for 5,000 yards with 53 touchdowns and 13 interceptions. His 5,000 yards and 53 touchdowns led Division II.
Bagent is the Rams’ all-time leader in passing yards (12,454), passing touchdowns (118) and completions (1,000). He holds the top three spots for single-season completions at SU.
As a true freshman in 2018, Bagent won Shepherd’s starting job and rewarded the Rams with a strong season, passing for 3,029 yards with 29 touchdowns.
In 2019, Bagent threw for 4,349 yards and 36 touchdowns.
The following year, Shepherd did not play in the fall as a result of the pandemic and ultimately competed in one game in the spring of 2021.
Bagent took in West Virginia’s men’s basketball game January 11 against Oklahoma State with Mountaineer head coach Neal Brown.
Although WVU has a void behind center after Jarret Doege opted to exercise an extra season of eligibility at Western Kentucky, Bagent isn’t bound for Morgantown.
The Mountaineers have three other scholarship quarterbacks — redshirt freshman Garrett Greene, true freshman Will Crowder and early enrollee Nicco Marchiol, who will be a true freshman for the 2022 season. None of the three has started a game in college and Greene has the most meaningful experience, having completed 16-of-26 passes for 147 yards, while rushing 47 times for 306 yards and four touchdowns in 2021.
WVU recently hired offensive coordinator Graham Harrell in what the Mountaineers hope is a move that helps ignite a unit that’s sputtered for much of Brown’s first three seasons as head coach.
Bagent also visited Maryland and told his hometown newspaper, The Journal: “Things with West Virginia didn’t work out, but Maryland really had my attention. I was going back and forth about Maryland. My heart’s here in Shepherdstown.”
Unlike West Virginia, the Terrapins’ starting quarterback from 2021 is set to return. Taulia Tagovailoa recently wrapped up a redshirt sophomore campaign in which he set single-season school marks with 328 completions and 3,860 passing yards.
Tagovailoa’s 26 touchdown passes tied Maryland’s single-season school mark. Three of those TDs came in Maryland’s 30-24 season-opening win over the Mountaineers, which featured a 332-yard passing performance from Tagovailoa.
Bagent had a decorated career at Martinsburg High School, where he led the Bulldogs to consecutive Class AAA championships in 2016 and 2017.