‘His future with WVU sports is totally at an end’
- Thread starter oceantide83
- Start date
I don't disagree we are on the brink of a tough season next year. It depends on the coach and his ability to sell the program in this "new" environment of college professional athletics on whether or not he can have a decent year 2 and beyond. It isn't a slam dunk that he will no matter who it is.
Last edited:
He had made the NCAA 2 of the past 4 years and certainly would have qualified if it wasn’t for Covid ending a season early, we were projected in by every pundit. By historical standards, he was still performing well above his predecessors. While I’m not naive enough to think he wasn’t showing his age, he definitely was nowhere close to being fired for performance related reasons. You also sure as hell don’t leave a highly valuable asset like the MBB program that has countless millions invested into its success without a captain for 10 months and counting.
That is why Huggins was so valuable. Sustained success is hard to come by, and if it’s found it’s even harder to keep the coach. The bluest of blue bloods can whiff on a coach, schools don’t want to spin the roulette wheel if they don’t have to. Even if we make a great hire, we are probably back here within 4 years.
It’s debatable if WVU can or can’t sustain a program that averaged 18-14 (7-11) over the last5 years. We will see soon.
When Huggins left Baker put out feelers, but no one was interested. I'm sure he could have hired a coach back then, but he wasn't sold on what was available. It was better to hire an interim and conduct a proper search like he is doing now. If we make a great hire we probably will be back searching for a coach in 4 years like you say. That was going to be the case regardless of how Huggins left. It's much easier to turn around a basketball program than a football program. When Beilen took over Catletts dumpster fire he had Wvu in the NIT in year 2 and in the elite 8 in year 3. That was in an era when players couldn't move as readily as they can today. Finding a final four caliber coach is a tall task. Finding a coach that can win 20 games squeak into the tournament and maybe win a game or two is highly possible and that's all that Huggins was at the time of his dismissal.
You are selectively lumping in Huggins worst season as a coach that pulls down the averages of your sample size and also not acknowledging that the Big XII has produced more NCAAT teams top to bottom than any other power conference in that timeframe. Catlett made the tournament about 1 out of every 3 tries, Beilein 2 of 5, Huggins 12 of 16 including 3 of 5 in your cherry picked sample size of last 5 years.
Success here = get your name called on Selection Sunday. If that means a losing conference record then so be it, Pitt came in 4th in the ACC this year… so what, no tournament, no one cares.
So he should have just suspended Huggins indefinitely and figured out what he could do behind the scenes. If he had no answers other than Eilert then he should have just let Huggins come back following a proper stay in rehab. The idea of throwing in an assistant who had basically 1 year of experience on the bench and mostly administrative experience was beyond reckless, and given how it panned out should be a fireable offense for Baker. How did we not atleast give Everhart the gig for one year? He used to coach Duquesne right? We would have had a puncher’s chance of atleast resembling a prepared basketball team against the Monmouths of the world.
Last edited:
Huggins DUI was the last straw. His time here is over. Wvu can find another coach that can produce the same results that he gave us over the last 5-6 years and get it for much less. Huggins may be in the HOF but he was not coaching at a HOF level the last 5-6 years. Every coach loses it with time Bobby Knight is a perfect example.
Historically speaking, no, we cannot find another coach that can produce those same results, and at a bargain… lol even more delusional. We’ll see, year 1 post Huggins, worst season in school history, no one at the helm to try and bring in new players for 10 straight months, current players all leaving. Fabulous start.
Exactly! And let’s be honest, he was having trouble retaining players. We all chalked it up to “the kid was trouble”. However, Im wondering if there was more to it. Oscar sure flourished at Kentucky.
We were literally just in the tournament this time last year, now our program is nothing but smoldering ashes. Like who cares about Oscar, obviously Huggins wasn’t perfect but it was a lot more fun actually having a basketball program vs this PR circlejerk we just endured.
You may be right. We may return to the days of Catlett. We’ve had quite a run and got lucky having Beilein and Huggins. Huggins was past his prime. He wasn’t gonna last here forever.
Yeah just let Huggins drive drunk. And shoot off at the mouth and offend recruits, donors, fans etc. makes sense. Nevermind the consequences. Good lord
I’ve already laid out sane options for what we could have done other than give the video guy the keys to something he was nowhere close to being qualified to run or mentally prepared to try and run for almost a full year. No one is here saying there should have been zero consequences.
Suspend indefinitely following completion of rehab, put out feelers for potential replacements, if he didn’t cooperate we should have turned to Everhart.
Last edited:
This was Huggins' last year regardless. That's why he went against everything he claimed he believed in and went out to get the best one-year mercenary team he could get out of the portal. Either way, whether this year or next, there is/was going to be a bum season just due to the lack of recruiting and development.
Maybe the next coach can pull a Belien and build a team into a NIT team next year or two and a tournament team thereafter. It's possible and the foundation has been built by Huggins and WVU.
Maybe the next coach can pull a Belien and build a team into a NIT team next year or two and a tournament team thereafter. It's possible and the foundation has been built by Huggins and WVU.
Huggins had 1-3 years at best left in him after the 2022-2023 season. He was also entering uncharted territory for him by using a team of cobbled together transfers. So had Huggins stayed a change was pending within the next 2 years, if not now, anyway. WVU may never have the sustained success Huggins had again. And I doubt Bob had a better than backing into a Sweet 16 run left in him since he hadn't been able to do better in 13 seasons. But all Huggins had to do was not metaphorically shoot his own d!ck off and he couldn't manage it.
Last edited:
Considering we have only made it past that round 3 times… not the slight you think it is. On the flip side, nearly half of the Sweet 16 appearances in school history were under Huggins and a third of all NCAA appearances came from Huggins.
Historically speaking we have also had coaches besides Huggins who have had success at Wvu. We don't know what the post Huggins era will look like. This season was a right off once Huggins was dismissed. Eilert was hired just to get us through this season that's what the word interim means. There is no reason we can't find another successful coach. In Huggins final season we went 19-15 and got bounced in round 1, nothing great about that. The program has been trending downward for years. Most of Huggins greatest accomplishments at Wvu and Cincinnati happened early in his tenure. Finding a coach that can bring Wvu to the Final four will be difficult. Finding a guy who can go 19-15 with a 1st round exit is achievable and we can get it for half the price.
I remember people saying the football program would fall apart after Nehlen left. Didn't happen and I don't think it will happen with the Basketball program. I think KK and the CRT will dump a ton of money to help out whomever is next in line. People are scared of change, but change is inevitable.
There’s really nothing wrong with change. The next coach may be a flop. Or maybe not. Who knows? One thing is certain, bringing Huggins back would be a PR nightmare. And inevitably make WVU look desperate and weak. What message would that send? Huggins is not bigger than WVU. Those wanting him back must think he is.
People need to realize that nothing lasts forever. I'm sure in the 1950's there were folks who said WVU basketball would fall off the map after Jerry West and Hot Rod Hundley left. How many of the students currently attending WVU even know who these two are. Huggins did many good things for WVU but not many will remember him 50 years down the road. WVU will always be there the students who attend and those that work there are there for a limited amount of time. WVU will survive we will have success again in Basketball who knows when it will happen, but it will.
Poster I quoted is very obviously pointing to Huggins inability to get past the Sweet 16 as a good reason for moving on, as if we just always lived in the Elite 8 or something.
When Nehlen left we didn’t go 10+ months without a coach and have zero players on the roster for the new coach to work with.
Beilein was a good coach and he was in the NIT in year 5. Catlett is probably what we’ll end up with eventually and our broke woke administration will happily sign up for a first round exit every 3 years, after years of spinning our tires to get out of the current mess of course.
Yes nothing lasts forever, but voluntarily blowing up everything without a succession plan from the best run in program history for good PR that lasted about 1 day on the ESPN ticker, has nothing to do with Huggins coaching here forever.
It is not a slight. I am not being sarcastic when I say that Huggins is currently, and may always be the best basketball coach in WVU history, and WVU may never have as good a run as it had from 2008-2021. I'm saying that Huggins self sabotage of his own WVU career only cut short the epilogue of his WVU story and not the climax. I am saying a coaching change was imminent regardless. Some act as though this incident erases what he has done or like WVU lost a coach with the better part of a decade and Final Four potential still left in the tank. Neither are true. But even if they were, it would be no one else's fault more than Huggins himself.
If anything was voluntarily blown up it was voluntarily done so by Huggins himself. Also, the program was already lacking in recruits and roster depth before Huggins' DUI. Huggins abandoned the typical "build them up from HS kids to upperclassmen basketball players" approach to try for one last NCAA tournament before his time was up. The roster would have been about as full of holes as it is now even if Huggins had stayed and kept his roster of 1 year rentals around.
If Bob Huggins didn't ruin anybody's entertainment for the season, he would be considered as having his shit together compared to a lot of the West Virginia residents. But since he ruined everybody's entertainment for a season, he's a junkie, and alcoholic a terrible person a bad influence on young adult basketball players. He was enabled. Hes a mess. My goodness those signs of addiction lol. He' a hall of famer but he sucks. What a horrible human being. Now hand me that damn Fentanyl and a Natty light!
Seriously though just the other day I was reading how West Virginia is leading in Fentanyl deaths. Not long before that I was watching a discussion about the Homeless Problem. Morgantown leaders are importing Junkies basically, from what I've heard. There's a lot of problems in the state. A whole bunch of them. And then the other night I'm scrolling through a Twitter feed and I see people bashing Bob Huggins for his terrible alcoholism. And for some reason Bob Huggins just doesn't seem very bad to me right now. This whole thing is silly.
Seriously though just the other day I was reading how West Virginia is leading in Fentanyl deaths. Not long before that I was watching a discussion about the Homeless Problem. Morgantown leaders are importing Junkies basically, from what I've heard. There's a lot of problems in the state. A whole bunch of them. And then the other night I'm scrolling through a Twitter feed and I see people bashing Bob Huggins for his terrible alcoholism. And for some reason Bob Huggins just doesn't seem very bad to me right now. This whole thing is silly.
Last edited:
Degrading West Virginia residents? What do they have to do with any of this? This is a business. And this was a business decision. Nobody said Huggins sucked, let alone a horrible human being. I can tell you, in most professional occupations dealing with a large audience in the public, the employer would’ve fired the employee for similar actions. While you might believe it shouldn’t matter, it actually does.
Actually a lot of people have said he sucked and that he's a bad person. He's also a West Virginia resident lol. Degrading West Virginia residents by pointing out the truth? He is a West Virginia resident. Why degrade him but not people who are actually worse? If your mind works like that you're part of the problem dude. Wake up
I don't think it's just Bob Huggins who was forced to abandon the typical build them up from high school kids to Upper classmen but it doesnt surprise me that you would blame him for it. That has nothing to do with huggins. He is a victim in that situation and I think a lot of us fans don't like what's going on in college sports. To my surprise, Huggins actually seem to figure out how to adjust and landed some really awesome recruits. It's a shame he didn't get to coach them but it seemed like he was figuring the nil out and was about to turn the corner in that regard. On another note I do think he was nearing the end of his career and he was going to retire soon. Which is really all I really wanted to see. I get a lot of hate on here for taking up for this man, but I really wasn't even expecting him to coach much longer regardless.
Last edited:
So you’re contradicting yourself. It’s not a problem but then it really is a problem? What’s your stance?
If you paid attention you would know my stance dude. But you're selective and that's just the way you are. I'm not contradicting myself I'm calling out the double standard that is pretty obvious to see.
No double standards lol?? That's pretty funny man. 😁
When rules are applied differently to different people or groups, it is, by very definition, a double standard whether you agree with it or not.... btw if you support the double standard, why not just say it and leave at that and just embrace it?
A lot of people seem to support double standards yet for some reason dont want to admit or embrace that they do. If you think popular people should be held to higher standards than unknowns, then you support double standards. People who think coaches and players should be role models and influencers openly support double standards even if they wont admit what it really is. Personally, I am one of the few who doesnt support these ideas. I dont think we should look at coaches and players or famous people as role models and hold them to a higher standard, or in other words, a double standard. They are just people trying to do their jobs, and in fact the public pressure microscope put on them to be role models and higher standard people, could even contribute to their stress that could in-turn lead to them abusing drugs or alcohol. You either support double standards, or you dont, but at least admit what it is and own it.
Edit:
If anyone in our society should be held to a higher standard, it should be public servants, imo. I dont care to get roasted for these views. Politicians, government departments, cops, etc, etc. But it is actually quite the opposite in reality. We let them do whatever and hold basketball players and coaches to a higher standard lol.
Last edited:
If we had Mitchell and Toussaint along with an actual basketball coach and not the career video coordinator trying to figure out how to handle being a Big XII head coach overnight I have to believe we would have fared a bit better than what we saw. The team wasn’t completely hopeless, they somehow beat Kansas so they had to have some talent, but losing a few all conference caliber players and being completely unorganized tanked any chance they had to be good.
What??? Try reading comprehension Bud. I said there is no double standard. Anyone in similar situations should be held accountable. You’re attempting to deflect because you still want Huggins here. Which would be a double standard. Punish everyone else, but not Huggins.
Similar threads
Latest posts
-
WVSPORTS.COM Frazier drafted by the Pittsburgh Steelers in second round
- Latest: twinsmom3130
-
-
-
-