Things could get interesting in the months to come if you read between the lines in the recruitment of Mingo Central's Jeremy Dillon.
Dillon, who committed to Marshall for basketball last September, has done nothing to tarnish his future in that sport, averaging a team-high 21.2 points for the Miners (15-4), who are ranked No. 3 in Class AA.
But there's also that smidgen of success Dillon had in football last year, when all he did was capture the Kennedy Award as the top player in West Virginia while leading Mingo Central to a 14-0 record and its first state championship.
At 6-foot-5 and 195 pounds, with enough athleticism to run for 1,205 yards and 24 touchdowns and the possessor of a beautiful deep ball, he's definitely going to be on the radar of Division I football programs. Including, apparently, the one in Morgantown.
When Mountaineers defensive coordinator Tony Gibson, a native of Van in Boone County, came back to the coalfields recently to chat with Mingo Central defensive end Daniel Buchanan about becoming a preferred walk-on with the Mountaineers, there was another facet to his visit.
"He came to talk to me and Jeremy,'' Buchanan said.
So safe to say that Dillon, who's been playing quarterback full-time only since Aug. 1, could end up being recruited in that sport by the Mountaineers if his development continues.
It might mean that WVU and Marshall, who haven't met on the football field since 2012 or on the basketball court since December of 2015, could be battling once more - this time for the services of one of the state's premier athletes.
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When calling around Thursday to get reaction from fellow coaches about the passing of former Mullens coach Don Nuckols, I got a nice story from Dave Barksdale, the former Woodrow Wilson coach.
Barksdale, who like Nuckols captured five state championships as a high school coach, never did get to line up and coach a regulation game against Nuckols, whom he considered a close friend. Reason being, Woodrow Wilson is a Class AAA school and Mullens at that time (in the early 1980s) was Class A.
In the fall of 1983, his first year with the Flying Eagles, Barksdale called Nuckols to arrange a preseason scrimmage in Beckley. Even though the two coaches knew the matchup didn't count on their record and was only meant to sort out the kinks for the regular season, they still couldn't shake their will to win.
Barksdale had a fairly deep squad and could sub five new players at a time, something the Rebels couldn't do with their shorter bench.
"After four quarters,'' Barksdale recalled, "they were ahead. But you know me and Nuckols, we're pretty tremendous competitors. After the fourth quarter, I didn't even look at the Mullens bench. I just sent our guys back out there [to keep playing].
"After the fifth quarter, we got closer, but I didn't think about looking back down there again. After the sixth quarter, we got a little closer and I think about the seventh or eighth quarter, we finally got ahead. And then I stood up and Don looked at me and said, 'Coach, we're getting pretty worn out.' Now they had a game coming up and we didn't open until real late, so I thought, 'OK, Don, that's all right,' because we were ahead.
"Now, he's pretty darn sharp. The next day, people asked me how it went and I said, 'Oh yeah, we won the scrimmage.' The same people asked Don about it and he looked at them and said, 'You know, I always thought basketball was a four-quarter game.' He got me again. We always laughed about that every time we saw each other.''
Barksdale also said Nuckols was ahead of his time when it came to summertime basketball camps, as he had one of the first such ventures in the state.
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The Mountain State Athletic Conference, as previously announced, is going back to one division of competition in basketball and other sports for the 2017-18 school year, again ditching the East and West formats.
Since Ripley is leaving the league following the completion of fall sports in 2017, that leaves the MSAC with 11 teams for winter sports in the 2017-18 school year.
Commissioner Fred Aldridge said the league has decided to play nine conference games in the regular season, meaning schools will play all but one of 10 possible opponents in sports such as basketball. Hopefully, local rivalries will be taken into account and not omitted.
In football, the MSAC will revert back to eight assigned league games every year from the current six, but there's a catch: It doesn't take effect until the 2020 season when the new four-year cycle of SSAC enrollment figures comes through, starting with the 2020-21 school year.
Aldridge said some schools were having problems finding football games and weren't thrilled with having to go far and wide to play. Both Capital and South Charleston made the trip to Johnson Central, Kentucky, last season and Cabell Midland played Belfry, Kentucky and Jackson, Ohio.
Contact Rick Ryan at 304-348-5175 or rickryan@wvgazettemail.com. Follow him on Twitter @RickRyanWV.