Addition by subtraction for Mountaineer backcourt

The panic that set in nearly doubled within a month when Terry Henderson, who was penciled in as another starting guard in a three-guard offense that would include Juwan Staten, also was transferring.

Say a “Woe is me!” right now.

Follow it with three “The sky is falling, the sky is falling, the sky is falling.”

And poor Staten. Pity the lad. He just opted to bypass a chance to go to the NBA draft to return to West Virginia.

For what?

It was obvious the team was going nowhere in 2014-15.

Oh, coach Bob Huggins had recruited a couple of guards named Daxter Miles Jr. and Jevon Carter, but how good could they be if they were willing to come in here and sit behind Staten, Harris and Henderson?

And, yeah, we’d all heard a lot about two ineligible kids — Jonathan Holton and Elijah Macon — but how good were they really they at their best, and they figured to be rusty.

It wasn’t a very picture, especially coming off back-to-back seasons when the closest WVU got to the NCAA Tournament was to watch it on television.

But like we said, it’s funny how things work out.

When last seen, that was Carter being carried off the Coliseum court on the shoulders of his teammates.

And wasn’t it Miles Jr., his friend and roommate, who gave him the opportunity, by hitting a twisting last-second layup while surrounded by the enemy to force overtime. Miles also hit two 3s in overtime to make the game close and followed that by making one of the best plays in Coliseum history — an incredible inbound pass to Carter — a play darn near matching some of Da’Sean Butler’s last-second heroics in the 2010 Final Four season.

The thing is, these were freshmen making the key plays, a couple of times with senior team leader Staten giving the ball up to them.

“They don’t look at you like a freshman or a senior,” Carter said.

Miles had enough of his freshman wits about him to grab the ball as soon as it went through the hoop on the basket by Trey Zeigler to put TCU up a point, step out of bounds, spot his roomie, understand his nod that he was going deep, unleashing a perfect pass that Carter could gather in to draw the foul on a layup he surely would have made without it.

Harris and Henderson? Where were they?

Harris is sitting out the year at Michigan State and the last thing I saw of Henderson, who is at North Carolina State, was that he has some legal problem of a minor as he sat out.

Meanwhile, in Morgantown, WVU beat the snow to head out for today’s 7 p.m. game at Kansas State, owning a 16-3 record — which is the same as Kansas, it might be noted — and sitting in the thick of the battle for the Big 12 regular season championship.

It is a team reinvented by Huggins, who reshaped the offense, reshaped the defense and injected his team with an exciting spirit and approach to the game unlike anything seen here through the past two loss-laden seasons.

To date, WVU has been built around that pressing defense that is like no other, really, in the game today, at least considering its success, making this a team that is doing incredibly different things.

For example, when you see it leading the nation in steals and turnover margin, you understand it is made up of quick, athletic type players, which is fine, but then you ask how it could be also leading the nation in offensive rebounds, which one would tend to believe would come from a team which is long and strong.

It is, too, a team which ranks second in scoring offense in the conference at 77.7 points a game yet ranks ninth in field goal percentage out of 10 teams and right at the bottom in 3-point percentage.

How can you shoot that badly and score that many points, especially when you also rank eighth in free throw percentage?

It is almost magical, yet rational because they are getting so many steals and turnovers that they are shooting the ball more than their opponents, a figure that only rises as they are also rebounding their own misses at such a rate that it sets up easy second, third and fourth shots at the basket.

Certainly Carter and Miles Jr., along with Jaysean Page and Tarik Phillip, each currently residing in Huggins’ doghouse, have joined Staten and Gary Browne to make an even deeper, more defensive minded guard corps than there would have been.

And with all the young players getting playing time, they are advancing far more rapidly than they would have as understudies to Harris and Henderson.

NOTES: WVU is coming off a thrilling 86-85 overtime victory over TCU on Saturday. Carter sank two free throws with 0.9 seconds left in overtime to lift WVU to the win after Miles Jr. hit a difficult layup with 1.2 seconds left to force overtime. The Mountaineers lead the nation in steals (238), steals per game (12.5), turnover margin (9.9) and offensive rebounds (17.9). Staten leads WVU in scoring with a 15.2 average. Kansas State senior forward Nino Williams led Kansas State in scoring for the third straight game with 20 points on 10-for-13 shooting in a 63-53 home victory over Oklahoma State on Saturday. The Wildcats are 42-5 at home under coach Bruce Weber, including 20-2 in Big 12 play. K-State has held its last seven home opponents to 61 or fewer points.

Follow Bob Hertzel on Twitter @bhertzel