MORGANTOWN -- A college basketball coach is many things, not just an expert in the X's and O's of the game.
In fact, the good ones are as adept at handling the X's and O's of the game of life as they are the game of basketball or football, for their responsibilities go far beyond the two or three hours on the sidelines.
They are recruiters and as such salesmen. Sometimes they seem like hell raisers when arguing with officials but they turn into fundraisers when dealing with donors and alumni.
Their main responsibility, though, is to their players as teachers and role models and parents in residence while their impressionable young players grow in four, five or six years away from home to play college basketball.
It isn't an easy profession by any regard, for each player is a different person, each has his own strengths and his own weaknesses … sometimes competing for dominance within his personality.
Bob Huggins has been at it for more than 40 years, but unlike parents, his "children" never really grow up and go on in life, for as they leave, a new recruiting class comes in and he has to learn each and win them over, just as they have to learn him.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. There are successes and there are failures …. there's a Logan Routt or an Oscar Tshiebwe, a Mike Gansey or Jonathan Hargett.
And sometimes there's Erik Stevenson.
There is a game played among those of us in the media, one watching Huggins and Stevenson interact. It goes on the bench, in the games, in media conferences. They are coach and player, yes, but in many ways they are one and the same and that isn't always a way to set out on a long, conflict-free journey.
Huggins is a strong man, set in his way, a fiery competitor. Stevenson is much the same and, against Oklahoma State in a crucial game, for a moment on the bench, they came eyeball to eyeball.
It said a lot and it said nothing really.
There was a moment where Stevenson did something that got him removed from the game. Huggins tried to gather him in and he looked as though he just wanted to go by. They both were trying to win but weren't connecting at the moment.
"I guess he thought I was talking back," Stevenson said when asked about the incident in the post-game media session. "I'm never going to win that battle. We subbed out and he lit into me a little bit. I didn't like it, but we've got that relationship. Everybody in the program knows that. It was literally nothing, nothing at all."
It has gone on all season, the pulling and pushing. Huggins has his way, Stevenson his. Neither is a shrinking violet and will voice his opinion … probably too much publicly on both sides.
Stevenson, of course, transferred into the WVU program for his final year after having been at Washington, Wichita State and with Huggins' close friend and former assistant Frank Martin at South Carolina.
"I'd say Frank and Greg Marshall at Wichita and the coach I'm playing for now, they're all cut from the same cloth. I'm cut from that cloth. I was raised that way," Stevenson explained. "I've kind of always developed relationships with coaches who are cut that way, as fiery and competitive as I am.
"They know it comes from a good place. Me making sure I'm playing the right way. We were on a different page for that little 15 to 20-second span and it was OK after that."
Huggins knew what he was getting with Stevenson, just as Stevenson knew what he was getting with Huggins.
"We talked about it when he was making his decision where he was going to go to school. He has jokingly said, 'It's great to play for a guy as crazy as I am,'" Huggins said.
But there were moments, the worst being when Stevenson picked up a technical foul for an obscene gesture at the crowd during the first Oklahoma State game in Stillwater, a technical that wound up helping cost WVU a game it should have won.
"I think Erik needed to concentrate on basketball and not on some of the other things," Huggins said as he talked about the relationship. "The deal that happened at Oklahoma State and some of those other things, those things don't do anything for him. They hurt him. A case like that hurt him drastically."
Huggins had an idea of how to handle that situation. His former player, Mike Gansey, is the general manager of the Cleveland Cavaliers, and Huggins knew that Stevenson is trying to make his way to the NBA at best or into a professional basketball career.
"I put him on the phone with Mike Gansey and I said to Mike, 'Tell him what he's doing to himself, not what somebody else is doing to him,'" Huggins explained. "Everybody wants to say, 'That guy … No, no, no, you are doing that to yourself, man.'"
There was a time early in the relationship when Stevenson was a challenge to what Huggins was trying to develop on the team, Stevenson seeing himself as a player/coach but not emotionally ready to handle such a role as say Jevon Carter did or Da'Sean Butler did with the Mountaineers.
That is changing, Huggins said.
"I think he's grown a lot. He's an emotional guy. That's OK. He's become a much better teammate. Before, he was quick to point out other people's mistakes but wasn't so quick to point out his own. I think a lot of that has changed. He's a different teammate now and for me he's a lot easier to coach."
If WVU is to make the post-season and advance, Stevenson at his best is necessary, as he brings life, energy and points to the team, an offensive firecracker with the always fuse lit ready to go off. He is eager to get his first taste of NCAA Tournament play, driven by that, as is Huggins, who is also starved for the NCAA experience after a couple of years without it.
Stevenson leads the Mountaineers with a 14.6 scoring average, is double anyone else in 3-point shots made with 62, makes 79.3 percent of his free throws on a team that can struggle there and, despite being a shooter, is unselfish with the ball and a good rebounder from the guard position.