On his last full day in Chattanooga — at least for a while — Honor Huff soaked everything in.
While the Scenic City was out in force celebrating the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga’s National Invitation Tournament championship with a downtown parade that culminated in a rally at Miller Park on Thursday night, Huff was doing everything that a player — rather, a person — twice named Mr. Chattanooga by his classmates would do.
He smiled, signed autographs, took pictures with UTC basketball fans. The sharp-shooting guard from Brooklyn, New York, also addressed the crowd, promising them that he is “really a Moc for life.” Deep down, though, the decision he’d made earlier this month was killing him.
It was just 48 hours after the Mocs won the program’s first NIT title that Huff had announced his intention to enter the NCAA transfer portal after three years in Chattanooga (due to Southern Conference rules, he had to sit out the 2022-23 season at UTC after transferring from fellow league program Virginia Military Institute, where he was a standout freshman).
Huff is moving up from the mid-major ranks and on to West Virginia, which competes in a power conference as a Big 12 program, for his final season of college eligibility. It’s a decision that he will flatly tell you he didn’t want to make, but due to the amount of money now being thrown around in college athletics — namely in football and basketball in the name, image and likeness era — he would be almost foolish not to.