He coached Taj Boyd and Percy Harvin at Landstown High in Virginia Beach and was involved in the recruitments of Geno Smith and Stedman Bailey as an assistant at West Virginia.

So Chris Beatty, now running-backs coach at Virginia, knows what a big-time football prospect looks like, even when the athlete doesn’t have a single football play on film.

Beatty was at a Petersburg High basketball practice 51⁄2 years ago, recruiting Quinton Spain, who became a three-year starter at offensive line for West Virginia.

While at the practice, Beatty didn’t need long to see that one of Spain’s teammates was worth recruiting to play Big 12 football.

“Do you play football?” Beatty recalled, in a Tuesday phone conversation, asking Frank Mason.

“No sir,” Mason told him at the practice.

“You would make a great cornerback,” Beatty told Mason.

Beatty then told then-Mountaineers head coach, the late Bill Stewart, that he needed to watch Mason play in a basketball game. Stewart obliged.

Not far into the game, Beatty recalled Stewart telling him, “Shoot, we would take him in a heartbeat. Great-looking prospect.”

Beatty didn’t need to be told about Mason’s recent heroics on the basketball court.

“Looks like he made the right choice,” Beatty said. “I saw where he just won a gold medal.”

Beatty recounted the qualities that made him envision Mason in a helmet.

“A lot of times, with coaches, everything is a projection,” Beatty said. “When you see how fluid he moves, so fluid on the court, the first thing you thing you think is, ‘He could do some great things on a football field.’ It wasn’t hard to see. Very athletic.”

Why cornerback?

“My natural assumption was cornerback,” Beatty said. “The way he moved, the quickness of his feet, the way he could flip his feet, shuffle and slide. Those things go hand in hand with being able to play corner. He was so effortless. When he had the ball in his hands, he was as fast as people without the ball. Those things transfer sports. And it’s easier to tell an athlete who hasn’t played football, ‘Go cover that cat,’ than, ‘Go cover a post corner route.’ I enjoyed meeting Frank. He seemed like a real nice kid.”

The day after getting the go-ahead from his boss at the basketball game, Beatty went to Petersburg High, had Mason pulled out of class to a meeting with him in an office and offered him a full ride to play football at West Virginia.

To the delight of every Kansas basketball fan, Mason decided to stick with basketball, a sport that puts a premium not just on height, but length. Mason, listed at 5-foot-11 and 185 pounds, has neither. His arms are on the short side, but it certainly doesn’t seem to hinder him.

Mason’s remarkable ability to control his body on the ground and in the air, his quickness and explosiveness, plus a strong will, made him more than anybody could handle in the World University Games in Gwangju, South Korea.

Statistics don’t capture value very precisely in basketball, but a few of Mason’s numbers from overseas do jump off the page. In eight games, Mason had more steals (20) than turnovers (16) and averaged 5.6 rebounds, ranking behind only Wayne Selden Jr. and Perry Ellis (6.5) in rebounding.

“Please tell him I said congratulations and wish him good luck for me,” Beatty said.

An accomplished recruiter, Beatty didn’t land Mason. David Beaty, another recruiter of note, knows better than to even try.