West Virginia head coach Bob Huggins watches from the bench during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game against Iowa State on Feb. 27 in Ames, Iowa. (AP Photo)

MORGANTOWN — Bob Huggins has fooled them all this year, putting together one of the top recruiting classes through the transfer portal, being an old dog who has been more than willing to learn some new tricks while relying heavily on what he’d learned through more than 40 years of putting together a Hall of Fame career.

How did he do it? How does a coach like Huggins approach putting together a team in a new era where the book of recruiting is being rewritten.

What becomes most important in putting it all back together again?

“Honestly, availability,” he answered. “It’s got a lot to do with availability; what’s going on with our guys, then you nose around and find out the guys who aren’t happy where they are. It’s a crap shoot, really.”

It is, but so often throughout his career, it’s come up 7 or 11 for Huggins, be it in the pre-portal and pre-NIL days or now.

Often we on the outside looking in overstate what goes into it, thinking of coaches finding players who fit their system, having a rigid coaching philosophy be it offensive or defensive, be it building a team that is technically and fundamentally sound and finding players to fit that or be it a more free-wheeling team with players who fit that mold.

Huggins doesn’t operate that way.

“It’s a need basis,” he said. “You can be loaded with guards and not have anybody who can rebound or you can have guys who can rebound but nobody who can pass. To me, it’s all on a need basis.”‘

His approach this off-season was to increase his team’s athleticism.

“We needed this year a guy who could disrupt shots, be an intimidator and in regard to keep a guy from being able to back down and do what he wants.”

Enter Syracuse transfer Jesse Edwards, who averaged 14.5 points a game, 10.3 points a game and 2.7 blocks.

In that spot, there was an availability and a need converging.

Huggins’ best team ever, of course, was his 2010 Final Four group that included Da’Sean Butler, Devin Ebanks, Kevin Jones, Wellington Smith and Truck Bryant.

“We weren’t all that athletic,” Huggins said. “What we had was basketball knowledge and toughness.. Joe Mazzulla was unbelievably tough. Just think about that little guy down in there against Kentucky to get to the Final Four with the biggest and best big player in the country.”

Huggins wound up using a defense that had Mazzulla, filling in for the injured Truck Bryant, battling against DeMarcus Cousins and holding his own.

“That team was to the point of being tired of hearing people ask were they good enough and all that and it did inspire them.” Huggins said.

A lot of people would not have had Mazzulla on their team, especially after he underwent shoulder surgery and could barely use his left arm, but toughness was part of the equation Huggins wanted with that group … and Mazzulla and Cam Thoroughman provided that.

Need and availability, to Huggins that’s what putting a team together through today’s recruiting is all about.

His mind wanders back to recruiting his new now-assistant coach DerMarr Johnson, a 6-9 player headed straight for the NBA, one from the Washington D.C. area, who all the big boys were chasing while Huggins was building his best team at Cincinnati.

He certainly filled Huggins’ biggest need, a 2-guard, but was he available with all the competition for him.

Sometimes you have to rely on your wits.

Connecticut’s Jim Calhoun and Huggins were supposed to meet with him the same day and Huggins, who was at that moment up in Bangor, Maine, told Calhoun to go ahead first, a dangerous tactic at best.

“He goes in there and is in there for an hour, so I went over to Max Good (then Johnson’s coach in Prep School) and said, “You got any ice?”

Good was amazed. “What?” he said.

“Ice, you got any ice,” said Huggins, and Good went and got him a couple of small bags of ice and went in to see DerMarr Johnson and handed them to the player he would come to call “DJ.”

“Here, hold these on your ears, because I know he just wore you out. I just want to listen. I’ll be here just 10 or 15 minutes, but here’s the deal. I got the best center in the country in Kenyon Martin without question. I don’t know if I got the best point guard in the country, but I know I got the best combination of point guards in Steve Logan and Kenny Satterfield. I probably got the best small forward in Pete Michael and probably got one of the top three or four power forwards in the country in Jermaine Tate.

“What I don’t have is a 2 guard who can make shots. Here’s the thing. You can take a chance on going somewhere and they feed up a line and you end up playing forward or they want you to be a stretch 4 or something like that.”

He paused, then added, “I’m telling you can’t beat out the other guys at our place. They are too good, they are too tough, too mean and you can’t beat them out but what you can do is come in here and be the best 2-guard in the country.”

He went off to talk to Coach Good, came back and said, “I want to commit.”

“It was that easy, that simple but it was need-based,” Huggins said.

It’s been that way with Huggins’ whole career. He generally finds the right guy and for what he needs and he lands him.

“You gotta kind of mix and match and that’s what we’re trying to do with this portal deal, is find the right guys for the right positions and, hopefully, at the right time,” Huggins said.

Who you need, it depends upon what the makeup of your team is to start with.

“We were able to do things some years because defensively we had guys who were very good. We were able to be Press Virginia because JC (Jevon Carter) was the best on-the-ball defender and Sagaba (Konate) was the best shot blocker. That allows you to put some guys on the floor who were not great defensively but were really good offensive,” Huggins explained.

In a lot of ways, it comes down to a feel, a vibe between player and coach. The perfect example of that was Erik Stevenson this past year as he was transferring to his fourth school after having played at Wichita State, Washington and South Carolina.

“I’m going to brag for a moment. Everybody said ‘You’re never going to be able to deal with Erik. He’s crazy. You won’t be able to deal with him,'” Huggins recalled. “‘I dealt with Erik. I’ve dealt with guys over the years over the years a lot of people didn’t think they could deal with.”

What made Huggins do it?

“I played for my dad. My dad was rough now. I learned a lot from him, honestly. I learned from Eldon Miller at Ohio State. In his own way he managed guys. It might not have been what I would have done, but he did it his way and it worked.”

So, Huggins brings Stevenson in when people are telling him it can’t work.

How’d that come to be?

“I think it gets to the point where he realizes he’s not going to win,” Huggins said. “Part of what helped was that he played for Frank (Martin, a Huggins protege and friend) the year before at South Carolina. We talk a lot about the good things he can do and the potholes you will run into along the way. I was a little bit more prepared than most would be.”

The two had their conflicts, including him costing a game at Oklahoma State with a bonehead move, and he made Huggins turn it loose.

“That was a ‘Come-to-Jesus’ meeting at half court between him and I,” Huggins said. “I thought he got better and better and better after that.”

The two actually became close and Stevenson had a big year.

Part of it is that Huggins now has seen it all.

“You go back to that Cincinnati team with Kenyon,” he said. “One of the hardest things I ever had to do was manage Satterfield and Logan. They were both McDonald’s All-Americans, really good players, but neither was a 2. They were both city kids, one from New York, one from Cleveland.

Huggins understands that with all the basketball knowledge he has, he is working in a people business and has learned to handle them.

“I think that’s why I’ve had six or eight offers to go coach in the NBA, but that’s something I never wanted to.”

In other words, the NBA had a need but Huggins was not available.