There’s the big question, right there. Teyvon Myers or Daxter Miles? Who starts? Who comes off the bench?

Bob Huggins, we know, is fully committed to the bench. He believes he has 10 or 11 guys who can go and that the cumulative strength of those 10 or 11 across 40 minutes will break opponents. It is hard to argue that.

He’s allowed both Jaysean Paige and Tarik Phillip to remain on the bench to start all but one game this season, even though they are among WVU’s three best players, and that lone exception was such a bad fit for Paige that Huggins has listened to both Paige and Phillip when they tell him they do not want to start games.

How important is the bench? By all indications, Nathan Adrian will remain a starter and Jon Holton isn’t coming back to the starting lineup anytime soon because …

“I thought Nate came in and played well and played with a lot of confidence [when Holton was suspended],” Huggins said. “I thought adding Jon to Tarik and Jaysean made that second unit really good.”

This is where the Miles/Myers component gets interesting. Adrian was taking on water until he started for Esa Ahmad on Jan. 26. Holton was suspended between that game and the next, and Adrian started for Holton as he missed four games for violating team rules. Adrian has played so much better as a starter. His confidence is up. He knows he belongs.

Holton’s been just fine as a sub, too, and he’s getting minutes and dosing his teammates with his signature traits of energy and disruption.

What does that have to do with Myers? Well, WVU has needed one more guard all season. Truth be told, Paige is playing small forward a lot in place of Ahmad, and though Adrian can play there, he’s been tagging with Holton for a while now. He’ll play some small forward and Paige can play some off guard, but you get the point. It would be nice for WVU to have that other guard, and this is no doubt why Huggins has been increasingly adamant that losing Beetle Bolden hurt.

Myers is that guard.

Starting Myers gets him in the game. He started twice when Miles was out, and that was more about Paige and Phillip and the team’s commitment to the bench than it was about Myers, but Myers benefited. It’s mostly imperceptible, but he’s been better. But maybe it’s less about where he is now than where he might go and what that might mean for WVU in tournament play and quick turnarounds and, who knows, strained knees or sprained wrists, so on and so forth.

Maybe Myers follows an Adrian track and becomes a resource. Miles is a known entity, even if we don’t know where his shot went, and it’s not like he’ll go in the tank because he isn’t starting. Do you, on the other hand, lose Myers and whatever progress and/or potential exists if he goes back to spot bench duty? You could argue that starting Myers gives Huggins a larger pool of choices to choose from and thus a better chance at finding his crunch-time players every half or every game.

And it’s not like Huggins has been married to his starting five once the game begins. How often have we seen starters yanked in the first minute? Half minute?!

“It doesn’t matter,” Huggins said. “They’re all going to play. I guess sometimes it’s kind of fun to trot out there on the carpet to start the game, but it’s a matter of getting as many minutes as you deserve and capitalizing on those minutes.

“You want to play more? Play better.”