OT: Bearcat Basketball

[cincygrad]

It's also unfair to compare Huggins success at WVU vs. the prior 40 years. WVU wasn't in a major conference until the early 90s when the joined the Big East. John Beilien had success with the program the years immediately proceeding Huggins, including trips to the elite 8 and the sweet 16. So, it's not like Huggins was taking over a program that hadn't had any recent success.

 

[Cincyfan78]

It's also unfair to compare Huggins success at WVU vs. the prior 40 years. WVU wasn't in a major conference until the early 90s when the joined the Big East. John Beilien had success with the program the years immediately proceeding Huggins, including trips to the elite 8 and the sweet 16. So, it's not like Huggins was taking over a program that hadn't had any recent success.

Agree with all you are saying!

Also, I'd like to point out that the landscape of college has vastly changed since the 90's. The AAC is basically C-USA, but back then you could really recruit to a UC in C-USA and get high NCAA seeds and make it the norm. I think the way the landscape has changed in basketball, it de-emphasizes the non P-5 leagues. Not nearly as much as football, because you have 64 teams that make the tournament still (Not, I'm not qualifying the play-in games). However, recruiting, money, exposure, TV deals, etc...etc...have all skewed heavily now towards those 5 leagues. Take the Big10 this year for example - all the run they got for beating up on eachother - and nearly every single team was gone by the end of the 1st weekend. Meanwhile, Houston was blazing a trail through their bracket, and Memphis won the NIT - and easily could have been a 2nd weekend team.

The landscape makes it really difficult to compare those 90's teams from C-USA to today's AAC, IMO. It's just not the same.