Huckabay was born in Chicago but later moved with his family to Louisiana where he played high school baseball and basketball.
In 1983 he was hired at Marshall, where he compiled a 129–59 record, including three appearances in the NCAA tournament and one in the NIT before resigning in 1989 amid an investigation into recruiting.
[1] Following Huckabay's resignation and a divorce, he chose not to seek another college job, but remained in the Huntington, West Virginia area where he held several high school coaching jobs in the city's Ohio suburbs, in order to remain near his two sons.
After his sons reached adulthood, he returned to Louisiana where he was coaching high school basketball when diagnosed with terminal cancer.
Huckabay was inducted posthumously into the Marshall University Athletic Hall of Fame in 2006.