Soon after Dan Dakich took the basketball head coaching job at West Virginia in 2002, he sat down with a yellow legal pad and wrote a list of the issues facing the Mountaineers. It became so long and daunting that he decided it was too much. Eight days after he was hired, he walked away from what he said was a seven-year contract offer worth $3.5 million to return to his old job at Bowling Green, which pays $125,000 a year.

Some of the most challenging items on Dakich’s list involved Jonathan Hargett, a top recruit from Richmond who had just completed his freshman season at West Virginia.

Dakich said Hargett told him that he had been promised $20,000 a year for three years, and that he had not been paid the full amount. Dakich also said that Hargett said he was tired of people “owning” him.

“I’ll never forget the sad look on his face for the rest of my life,” Dakich said of the moment Hargett said those words. Hargett, now serving a prison sentence for drug possession with intent to sell, did not recall telling Dakich that, but said the statement was an accurate reflection of his feelings then.