MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – You can probably narrow it down to a couple of different moments in Bob Huggins' young basketball career that ultimately set him down a path toward the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
 
The first happened at Ursinus College in the summer of 1977 when he was trying out for the NBA's Philadelphia 76ers. That was the moment when he came to the realization that he wasn't going to make a living as a professional basketball player.
 
Huggins was one of three rookies left in the locker room, the two others being No. 1 pick Bob Elliot and No. 2 pick Herman Harris, when wise-guy 76ers trainer Al Domenico walked in where they were sitting to deliver some life-changing news.
 
"You wanna know who made the team?" Domenico asked. The two guys sitting next to Huggins jumped up and told him to tell them. He answered, "None of you MFers!" as he ran out of the room.
 
While the other two guys were sitting in stunned silence trying to process what they had just heard, Huggins got up and started filling his gym bag with all of the 76ers paraphernalia he could get his hands on. Of course, all three got cut and nobody from the 76ers – the head coach, the general manager or any of the assistant coaches – stuck around to tell them. All of those years of practicing and playing came down to a trainer who looked just like Fonzie, the character in the popular 1970s TV show "Happy Days," dishing out some real-life reality.
 
Huggins went back to West Virginia and was offered a position as a graduate assistant on Joedy Gardner's staff to help coach the guys he once played with the year prior.
 
"Getting cut by the 76ers, I had a real good idea I wasn't going to make it with the team that they had," Huggins recalled Wednesday afternoon. "I was very fortunate to be there, and it was a great learning experience for me, but coming back, coach Gardner was very good to me."
 
Still, having someone be nice to you doesn't pay the bills.
 
"My wife (June) was working in the Coliseum selling hot dogs and Cokes, and I can remember going home after a practice and she had taken a couple of hot dogs home from the concession stand for dinner, and you start to think to yourself, 'Man, I better find a (good) job pretty soon.'"
 
That's when Huggins realized the people who really make money in basketball are the ones making the big decisions, not the little ones.
 
But in order to get there, he needed some affirmation that what he knew and what he was teaching worked. That came from Joe Fryz, one of West Virginia's big-name recruits from Pittsburgh who had lots of ability but was a little short on confidence.
 
Fryz, who tragically died of ALS in 2017, came to rely on Huggins' advice and counsel, which not only helped him during his college career, but also demonstrated to Huggins that he could really make a difference with players. During his senior season in 1980, Fryz was a double-digit scorer for the Mountaineers.
 
"Joe wanted help and just to get him to understand what was about to happen," Huggins recalled.
 
You won't see Joe Fryz's name on the long list of great players associated with Bob Huggins, but he was probably one of the first guys who really benefited from Huggins' knowledge and wisdom.
 
The other big moment in Huggins' career development came a year after he worked at Ohio State as Eldon Miller's graduate assistant coach. 
 
Miller started to give Huggins more and more responsibility as he got to know and trust him, and near the end of his tenure at Ohio State, Huggins was doing most of the scouting and was even involved in recruiting.
 
"(Clark Kellogg) was the No. 1 recruit in the country. We recruited Granville Waiters, a 7-footer who played in the NBA, but we missed on three of the best point guards in the country," Huggins said. "I'll never forget, coach said, 'We've got to find a point guard' and I said, 'I know where there's one and he's probably in the trailer having dinner with my mom and dad right now – my little brother (Larry).' 
 
"He was all set to go to Virginia Tech, and I'm like, 'No, man, you need to come (to Ohio State) for a lot of reasons' - and for reasons that I really believed. He ended up having a heck of a career at Ohio State."
 
After two years at Ohio State, Huggins was ready to go off on his own and become a head coach. In fact, he wanted it so badly that he took the first job he was offered even though it was not necessarily the best opportunity that came his way.
 
"The first school to ask me to be a head coach was Walsh College, so I went to Walsh. I would have gotten paid two or three times more at Malone (University) if I would have waited three or four more days, but I just wanted to be a head coach," he explained.
 
Walsh wasn't very good when Huggins got there, but it only took the Cavaliers a couple of years to become one of the best NAIA teams in the country. His '83 team won 34 of 35 games when Akron came calling.
 
After that came his amazing coaching tenures at Cincinnati and West Virginia, but it was at Walsh where Huggins realized that what he was doing was really good. 
 
From there, the rest is history.
 
This Saturday night, Huggins will be officially inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame, joining 12 other deserving inductees. He is not sentimental by nature, but it will be difficult for even him to navigate the flood of memories that are bound to overcome him this weekend.
 
Some were already percolating Wednesday afternoon.
 
"When I think about losing my mother to cancer … that's not very pleasant and that seems to come up a lot," he said. 
 
Later, he brought up radio personality George Von Benko, who has a show in nearby Uniontown, Pennsylvania.
 
"I just did an interview with George Von Benko, and when I was a GA, we used to do a pregame show, and we would sit down there on those metal bleachers in front of the equipment room, which is now going to be a club area for our (donors)," he recalled.
 
He also mentioned the names Ed McCluskey and Terry Leggett, two successful high school coaches whom he got to know during the years they all worked together at his father Charlie's basketball camp in Northeastern Ohio. 
 
"Virtually every coach in Ohio came through that camp at one time or another," Huggins explained. "I knew those guys, which opened up a lot of opportunities for me."
 
Was Bob Huggins born to be a basketball coach, or did life's circumstances push him in that direction? Probably both, but there is no question Huggins ultimately chose the right path.
 
The alternative?
 
"University president," he joked. 
 
Now, wouldn't that have been something? 
 
"I think it would have been in basketball, although I don't know what form," he conceded.
 
The official induction ceremony in Springfield, Massachusetts, will begin at 7 p.m. on Saturday night and will be televised live on NBA TV. The press conference at 2 p.m. and the ring and jacket ceremony at 8 p.m. on Friday will also be carried live on NBA TV.
 
Huggins becomes just the fourth person associated with West Virginia University to be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, joining Jerry West, Rod Thorn and Hot Rod Hundley. 
 
Thorn was inducted as a contributor while Hundley is a member of the broadcasting wing of the hall of fame.