Lots of similarities there, right?

They play different sports, but Juwan Staten and Kevin White are alike in two very significant ways.

Juwan Staten was Kevin White on the basketball floor before Kevin White was Kevin White on the football field. Staten figured out, or more likely remembered, he was a very good player who was just better than the guy across from him. He found a physical attribute or two and applied it and them over and over and he could not be stopped. Defenses were geared to guard him.

And Staten was not always this Staten.

His 2012-13 season was not up to his standards, and he dedicated everything that happened after that season ended and before the following season began to making sure he wrote an entirely different chapter when the time came to write the next chapter.

Sounds just like White, right? If you have a hard time grasping White’s success this season, how he made a statenian jump from one year to the next, understand he has no idea how it happened either because he simply cannot explain what happened last season.

“It’s been motivation all year how I played last year,” White said. “I take everything really personal because last year, I don’t know. I don’t know what I was doing. But I came out to prove a point I’m a different player with a different mindset.”

Who might know what he was doing? Who could understand and articulate the struggle that precedes success? I quizzed Staten yesterday.

He watches every WVU game, if not in the stadium, than on television. And he’s a fan of White’s, and not merely because they play for the same school. The obvious question then followed: You see some of yourself in him, right?

“It’s all in the way you look at it,” Staten said.

Translation: It really is hard to explain, and it’s harder to understand if you haven’t been through the lows and the very long trek to the highs. (Also, the best competitors — and I’d include both gentlemen in that group — don’t like to be reminded or to remember they were once vulnerable. It’s touchy. It’s altogether possible my translation is wrong and Staten simply meant to say, “This again?”)

So how does Staten look at another player who transferred and had trouble before he dominated?

“I would say he got more acclimated,” Staten said.

That’s something White says repeatedly. Once he knew the coaches and the teammates and the level of competition and the speed of practices and games and the demands of the conditioning programs, he started to accelerate. Staten didn’t have quite the same transition from one level to another, but sitting out a whole season will require a player to get reacclimatized.

Still, for Staten to suggest that, it stands to reason that the two have talked about this before.

Nope.

“I don’t know him, but I wouldn’t mind meeting him,” Staten said. “I appreciate guys who work hard and guys who take pride in what they do. I think he’s gotten more comfortable. I saw a lot of flashes last year when he was able to play that he was a great player. I also heard he was hurt some last year through the season, but this year, he looks like he’s healthy and that he knew what to expect going into the season.”

How about that? Two superstars in their sports. Two All-America players. Two future pros who will not only reach that level, but will make it there after being at a wholly different level not that long ago. On the same campus.

And they’ve never met? They’ve never spoken? They’ve never retweeted one another?

“Maybe you can make that happen,” Staten said. “I’d like to meet him.”