MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - The old master was at it again.

 

The old master, of course, is Bob Huggins, who put his 35 years’ worth of basketball coaching experience to good use on Tuesday night against No. 2-ranked Kansas.

 

Huggins’ team was in a big funk because his best player was in a big funk. His best player, if you haven’t realized this, is Esa Ahmad, the two-time Cleveland area player of the year and the cornerstone signee in West Virginia’s 2015 recruiting class.

 

The 6-foot-8-inch, 225-pound forward with guard skills was brought in here to play just like Taurean Prince, Abdel Nader, Kelly Oubre, Andrew Wiggins and some of the other top Big 12 wing players of the past few years did.

 

We saw a brief glimpse of what Esa could do in last year’s NCAA tournament loss to Stephen F. Austin, and we saw it again in short spurts earlier this season against Temple, Manhattan and then down the stretch in West Virginia’s big road win at Virginia.

 

But it was only in small bursts - nothing close to what Ahmad is capable of doing on a more consistent basis.

 

“When he’s in attack mode it’s very tough to stop him because he’s a big guy and he usually has smaller guys on him,” teammate Tarik Phillip explained. “When he’s (playing) low there is nothing people can do with him.”

 

Watching Esa play (and sometimes not play) reminded me of something Chris Enochs, West Virginia’s former first-round draft pick whose professional baseball career never really took off, once told me about success.

 

“At moments, everybody is really, really good,” he explained, “but prolonging those moments of success and finding a way to be consistent is the hardest part of all.”

 

Indeed, it is the most difficult thing to do in sports.

 

And Huggins, who has coached his fair share of terrific basketball players through the years, has been seeking the right buttons to push to get Ahmad playing the way he is capable of playing on a more regular basis.

 

His message to Esa: get into the gym.

 

Get into the gym, stay in the gym and when you are in the gym have a purpose.

 

Don’t go in there and jack up shots you’re not going to take in games. Don’t go in there and hang out with your buddies and talk about what you are going to do later that night.

 

Get in there and work your craft, work your mind and get things right.

 

The sooner the better.

 

“I think he kind of rededicated himself to the game, really after the Kansas State game,” Huggins said Tuesday night following West Virginia’s 85-69 win over Kansas. “He wasn’t very good in the (Kansas State) game. He got into the gym. I know you guys are tired of me saying that, but again, he got into the gym. He was in the gym last night at 9 o’clock after being in there early before practice and late after practice.

 

“That’s kind of what it takes.”

 

Huggins told Da’Sean Butler the same thing after his so-so sophomore season in 2008, and Butler took Huggins’ message to heart.

 

When he returned in the fall he was an entirely different basketball player, and when Huggins noticed his players weren’t passing Butler the basketball during the team’s scrimmage game against Virginia, he lit into them like they had just broken into his car and taken all of the loose change sitting in his console.

 

Last night against Kansas - a game West Virginia desperately needed to win to remain in contention for a Big 12 regular season title - the very first play Huggins drew up on the grease board was to Ahmad.

 

This was the dude who scored just eight points in the Baylor win, the dude who had only four points at Texas, six in an overtime loss to Oklahoma and was coming off a three-point, two-turnover stinker at Kansas State last Saturday.

 

Why?

 

Because if this team is going anywhere this year, Esa Ahmad is going to be the guy at the wheel steering it there.

 

Huggins knows it. The players know it, and Ahmad may be finally coming around to realizing it, too.

 

“I knew I had two bad games. I’ve been in a slump, and I just wanted to come out and be aggressive,” Ahmad said. “I’ve been getting some extra shots and it paid off here.”

 

It sure did.

 

His 27-point, five-rebound, two-assist performance going head-to-head against Josh Jackson, the nation’s No. 1 recruit last year and a likely NBA Draft lottery pick later this summer, is a clear demonstration of the type of player Ahmad can be.

 

His Kansas performance is now out there for everyone to see.

 

“I felt like (facing Jackson) fired Esa up knowing that he’s got a top-10 potential guy who is going to the league,” forward Elijah Macon mentioned. “It would fire me up, too.”

 

The question is, can Ahmad do again?

 

More importantly, can he do it more frequently?

 

The good ones do it sometimes, the really good ones do it a lot of times, but the great ones do it all of the time.

 

Tuesday night Ahmad showed us he is a good player.

 

But can he be really good?

 

Can he be great?

 

We’ll see.