MORGANTOWN — So, you were wondering how West Virginia University basketball coach Bob Huggins got his first head coaching job, starting him down the road that might end in the College Basketball Hall of Fame, right?

Well, here’s the story, direct from the man who hired him, Walsh University President Richard Jusseaume. This is the story he told the Pro Football Hall of Fame Luncheon Club, according to a report in the Canton Repository.

Walsh was getting ready for the 1980-81 basketball season, and Jusseaume went to Indian Valley South High to try and hire a coach named Huggins.

Charley Huggins, that is, Bob’s father.

“I knew Charley Huggins and had tried to sign him forever,” Jusseaume recalled.

Huggins told him Jusseaume had good news and bad news for him.

The bad news?

“He said his wife didn’t want to go to Canton; their daughter was a senior in high school and he wouldn’t be taking the job,” Jusseaume, who was then dean of students at Walsh, said.

The good news?

“How about my kid?” Charley Huggins said.

He told him how Bob had been had been team captain at West Virginia and was then a 26-year-old unpaid assistant at Ohio State.

Jusseaume hired Bob Huggins.

“When he got here, he put up a large sign at the top of the stairs. It read: ‘We will be national champions,’” Jusseaume remembered. “We hadn’t even had one winning season, but that first year we were 14-6, the second 21-18 and the third, we were 34-0.”

Actually it was 34-1 and a third-place finish in the 1982-83 national championship tournament.

“Then it was bye-bye, Bobby,” Jusseaume said.

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Speaking of Huggins, his own Frankenstein, otherwise known as Joe Alexander, the NBA player he created in his first year at WVU, was a huge hit in China as he went there with the Milwaukee Bucks, who made him their No. 8 draft pick.

Alexander spent much of his youth in Beijing, Hong Kong and Taiwan and speaks fluent Mandarin, so he was swamped by reporters.

“They enjoyed me a little bit,” he told The Boston Globe. “There was a pretty fair amount (of media), more than I’m used to.”

And when the Bucks and Golden State Warriors were guests at an NBA-sponsored reception, Bucks coach Scott Skiles asked Alexander to say a few words. He spoke in Mandarin.

“As soon as he started to speak, people applauded out of excitement,” Bucks director of public relations Dan Smyczek said.

Alexander shook an abdominal strain in time to score 11 points in his first game as a professional.

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The word going around the Puskar Center this week kind of explains why West Virginia wasn’t throwing the ball deep last week against Syracuse — it doesn’t explain any other games — is that backup quarterback Jarrett Brown’s injured shoulder was more than just a “dinged up” as coach Bill Stewart put it early in the week in his press conference.

The term that was used by two players was a “torn labrum,” a painful injury to the shoulder joint that often doesn’t need surgery but can require physical therapy and anti-inflammatory medication.

With Pat White back this week, look for WVU to toss the ball a bit more than it has, again mostly short stuff.

“You’ll see a better game plan this week,” is the way one player put it.

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Adam “Pacman” Jones gets suspended for four games and seems headed into alcohol rehabilitation, so now you’re wondering what’s up with his one-time WVU running mate, Chris Henry, who just got over his own four-game suspension and has come back to play for Cincinnati.

The Cincinnati Enquirer chatted with Henry after the Adam Jones decision was announced, and it appears Commissioner Roger Goodell has made an impression on the Bengals’ wide receiver.

“I guess the commissioner really ain’t putting up with anything, especially being in his situation and my situation,” Henry said, referring to Jones’ and his position. “I’m concentrating on football and off the field with my family every day, and that’s all I plan on doing. He ain’t going to have any problem with Chris Henry.”

The “ain’ts,” I am told, are not part of his WVU education.

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There are some misconceptions going around that it is time to put an end to.

The first is that Pat White was some kind of creation by Coach Rich Rodriguez at West Virginia, a kid who was somewhat off the charts when he came out of Alabama as a recruit.

For example, this is how WVU running backs coach Chris Beatty was quoted this week when talking about losing QB recruit Tajh Boyd: “There are a lot of other players out there, but also, who thought Pat White would be Pat White coming out?”

A lot of people did.

The truth is, if baseball weren’t in the picture, more schools would have been interested. But White was No. 3 in the voting for Mr. Football in Alabama out of high school and that was LSU where he accepted a scholarship first, a sign that maybe he was pretty good.

And anyone who believes that Rodriguez thought Adam Bednarik, not White, was going to be his quarterback of the future because Bednarik started until being hurt, doesn’t know anything about bringing a freshman along slowly.

E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.