Photo courtesy of WVU Sports Communications WVU guard Honor Huff connected on 131 3-pointers last season at Chattanooga.

MORGANTOWN — Honor Huff’s game is all New York City, he admits, going back to his days as a nine-year old when his father would take him to the Brooklyn courts and make his son call out that he had next game.

“It was all older kids out there. I was scared. I was like, no, I’m not calling next,” Huff recalled the story. “I would play with my dad on his team up to that point, but he told me it was time to man up.

“That’s how confidence gets instilled early in you in New York, because you have to have that grit to you. If you don’t have it, you get left behind.”

The name is a comical argument between his parents, who both believe they were the ones to come up with the name Honor.

“They have two different stories as to why they named me that,” Huff said. “They did come to the consensus that they named me Honor, because I had to live up to something.

“It’s hard to be named Honor and then be a bum on the street.”

Huff, one of the 12 new scholarship players this season on the WVU men’s basketball roster under first-year head coach Ross Hodge, is definitely no bum.

Far from it. In fact, he’s the nation’s returning 3-point shooter, having made 131 of them last season while at Chattanooga.

“There were some games where we’d be laughing in the locker room,” he said. “I would hit, like, eight 3-pointers and my teammates were asking me why would they let you shoot a three? Why would they even let you shoot?”

That’s been a question that could have been asked for the last two seasons, actually.

Huff comes to WVU as one of Hodge’s eight transfer portal additions having connected on 240 of 602 3-point attempts during his two seasons with the Mocs.

The numbers nearly overshadow Huff’s 5-foot-10, 168-pound frame, which is not exactly the ideal size for a Big 12 shooting guard.

It hardly fazes Huff, though, who has spent most of his career being told he was too small, only to prove he belongs.

“I’ve always been underestimated and overlooked my whole career,” Huff said. “I think that’s what I bring (to WVU), that kind of grit and a chip on my shoulder and obviously my ability to shoot.”

When you combine Huff’s shooting ability along with teammate Treysen Eaglestaff — he had 84 3-pointers last season at North Dakota — that’s when you get to the height of optimism that surrounds Hodge’s first season with the Mountaineers.

Huff and Eaglestaff are roommates and the two discuss their ability to shoot the ball regularly.

“We talk all the time. Our ability to shoot the ball is going to cause havoc,” Huff said. “I’m excited to see what we can do and how defenses try to scheme it.”

So is Hodge.

“The range they both can shoot it with creates a lot of space and opens up a lot of space for the other players on the floor,” Hodge said. “Those guys have a gravitational pull to where you have to know where they are, because if you make a mistake for a half second, the ball is already in their hand and out of their hand. They shoot it at a really good clip.”

To a degree, that’s the type of stuff that’s been said about Huff for a while. He’s a great shooter who commands attention from defenses.

It’s what hasn’t been said about him is what drew Huff to Hodge and WVU. Put simply, Hodge being a defense-first kind of basketball coach didn’t scare off the offensive-minded Huff.

“It’s funny, because I tell people all the time it’s a complete flip from my old school,” Huff said. “My old coach, coach (Dan) Earl, is like an offensive savant. I come here and all we do is play defense.

“At the next level, they are going to expect me to guard and guard hard. We kind of looked at it as a way to expound on my defensive capabilities and grow and enhance. I think that’s what coach Hodge has done so far.”