MORGANTOWN — Former West Virginia University basketball coach Dan Dakich stood steadfastly behind his accusation that one-time WVU President David Hardesty threatened to “destroy” him if he revealed he had uncovered a number of rules violations, the most serious being that star player Jonathan Hargett was being paid to perform.

During a 15-minute rant on his morning radio show on ESPN 1070, The Fan, in Indianapolis, Dakich admitted, “I felt threatened enough to smirk at him and think to myself, ‘You come over that desk and I’ll knock you out in three seconds.’ That’s how threatened I felt.”

The imagery that comes out of Dakich’s description of the moment is hard to grasp, as Hardesty is hardly a menacing figure and never operated through threats or by confrontations.

Dakich’s show included an interview with Pete Thamel of The New York Times, who ignited anew the controversy surrounding the recruitment of Hargett by coach Gale Catlett when he wrote an in-depth look at him 10 years later as he is readying to rejoin the world after a five-year prison term on a drug conviction.

During the interview, Hargett spoke of being paid to play basketball at WVU and that was at the heart of the bizarre coaching circus that saw Dakich take the job as Catlett’s replacement in 2002 and then quit eight days later.

Dakich refuses to accept West Virginia’s version of the Hargett affair or even the NCAA’s conclusion after an investigation that the school had no knowledge or was involved in the payments to Hargett.

He noted that Hargett’s family had flown out to Albuquerque to see him play, even though they were said to be in poverty.

“Think about this,” he said. “A kid that doesn’t have anything and (assistant coach) Chris Cheeks knows he doesn’t have anything because he coached his older brother, yet the family can fly out to Albuquerque and watch him play and nobody says a word. Nobody says a word about it ... but they don’t know anything.”

Dakich said if a kid’s family flew out to watch him play when he was an assistant at Indiana or head coach at Bowling Green, he would have asked and dug into it.

“That’s why I said in the article there was a history of dishonesty that had been around a long, long, long, long time,” Dakich said. “The president said he was going to destroy us and after that went into a story about Gale Catlett being a great man and bringing his dead father-in-law home from somewhere.

“I remember saying to the president, ‘You’re right, he’s probably a great man, but I have been here 24 minutes and I have found all of this stuff out. You all have been here 24 years and you don’t know what the hell is going on in your program. Explain that to me.’”

Dakich said he did not receive an answer but the conversation changed to recruiting him to stay on the job.

Dakich claims the Hargett violation was not the only one he uncovered in his “24 minutes.”

“That was one of I don’t know how many things I was told — some very serious things — that Pete (Thamel) didn’t put in the article, things that I will never talk about ever,” Dakich said.

Dakich says people have asked him how if things were so bad a respected coach like John Beilein could follow him in and build the program out of the ashes.

“It’s easy,” Dakich said. “John told me he was 52 years old, and he said, ‘Man, they cleaned it up. You made it into a great job.’”

In fact, Dakich says the job Beilein did coming into that situation was among the best ever in college basketball by a coach.

“Beilein did the best job in the history of basketball, getting to the Final Eight in his third year, at least in my opinion. That’s why I think John Beilein is a top three coach in the country. I think he’s fantastic,” Dakich said.

Dakich also says Bob Huggins is a friend of his and a great coach, but he wonders about his hiring at WVU.

“West Virginia is saying they want to run a clean program. At the time they hired Bob Huggins ... ,” he said, his voice trailing off and pausing for a moment, then adding, “You make your own assumptions about that at that time.”

He does not make any allegations against Huggins.

“I think Huggins has done a great job, and he’s done a great job of masterminding his own career, meaning now kids graduate, but at the time they didn’t. At the time he was being investigated by the NCAA over Bill Walker and Michael Beasley. West Virginia waited two seconds to hire Bob at the time he was being investigated.”

Email Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com or follow him on Twitter @bhertzel.