Bob Huggins has been around since the beginning of basketball, it seems.
He’s seen it all. He’s experienced the heights of glory and the pain of excruciating heartache, and he’d done it all before any of his current players were even born.
And he saw all of this coming, yet he still couldn’t do anything to stop it.
The question is, what now?
Look, West Virginia University’s lifeless, joyless, 69-59 setback at Oklahoma Saturday may be just a blip on the radar when the season is over. And it may turn out that the Mountaineers are the eighth-best team in the country, as indicated Saturday by the NCAA Tournament selection committee. Keep in mind that last year, on Feb. 9, the selection committee predicted the top 8 teams for the 2019 tourney, and, indeed, all eight ended up as No. 1 or No. 2 seeds.
Let’s also keep in mind that, at this time last year, WVU was skidding and on Feb. 9 was shellacked by 23 points by Texas. Two days later, starting forwards Esa Ahmad and Wesley Harris were dismissed from the team.
At that point Huggins said he’d get it fixed: “We’ll be as good as anyone in the Big 12 next season. I really believe that.”
Prognosticator, he is. WVU is ranked 13th in AP’s latest NCAA basketball rankins. Need more proof of Huggs’ crystal-ball vision? After Wednesday’s methodical 76-61 takedown of Iowa State, the coach was downright grumpy. Couldn’t make free throws, didn’t rebound — “That’s effort” — and 19 turnovers,etc. But the chilling statement was this: “This group is generally enthusiastic and pulling for each other. None of that today.”
And not much changed on Saturday. Combine that with a superior opponent and a road game* and you got Saturday’s head-scratcher in Norman. The Mountaineers are now 15-0 at home and on neutral floors, 3-5 in hostile gyms.
*Can we stop calling WVU’s away games, road games? Can we call them air games? Jetlag games? I mean, when do they ever travel ON THE ROAD? The Big 12 is a nightmare logistically for WVU. The players get back from away games in the wee hours — 5 a.m. at times — then still have a day of classes, study time, practice, etc. Does the wear-and-tear factor in to the lack of enthusiasm?
“We won the other day and everyone was like, why are you so down?” Huggins offered on his post-game radio show Saturday. “I saw this coming. I tried to talk to them about it. They’re not the same guys. Before, when I talked, I had every eye on me. Now I don’t. When Larry (Harrison, assistant coach) talked, all eyes on him. Now they’re not. That’s attitude. That’s how you approach, not just basketball, but life.”
He compared this team to the 2015-16 squad that was ranked in the Top 10 nationally and took a 26-8 record into the NCAA tourney before getting drilled in the first round: “The team that we had the best chance to win the National Championship was the team that lost in the first round to Stephen F. Austin. They were talented. And deep. I told them, you’re gonna get your ass beat. You got a bad attitude. And ya know what? They did. And it wasn’t close.”
So, again, what now? Where do they go from here?
We’ll find out soon enough. Kansas, ranked third in the NCAA, comes calling on Wednesday, followed by a Saturday visit to Baylor, the nation’s top-ranked team. No time for tomfoolery.
Bob Huggins has been here before, and he knows the score. He’s at the mercy of the whims of 20-year-olds, and it’s driving him crazy. But he said, one year ago, that he’d get this program fixed, and WVU is back in the top 20 in the nation.
Let’s see how this plays out, shall we? The man with 877 career wins is on it.
