Why Huggins is where he belongs?

[WvuDieHard]

Certain Coaches in college basketball belong at certain places. What would Duke be without Coach K? Or what would North Carolina have been with out Dean Smith? Or Coach Wooden at UCLA? They all had qualities that will forever be associated with their schools. They are Hall of Fame Coaches emboweled in the very fabric of their institutions. Bob Huggins is taking on that very mold here at West Virginia University. Huggins legacy may not be the NCAA Championships that Coach K, Smith or Wooden have achieved but more of one of compassion. Tuesday night was another example of that compassion as Huggins agreed to let Nicholas Wince, a 5year kid with heart problems, fulfill his wish to become a Mountaineer. Through the Make-A-Wish Program, Huggins allowed Nicholas to sign a letter of intent, give Nicholas and his parents a tour of the team’s new practice facility, meet the Mountaineer and attend Tuesday afternoon’s game day shoot-around. That was something special for a kid who has seen multiple operations at such a young age.

Yet there is more to this fiery, heated Coach that you see ranting up and down the sidelines. Huggins continuously preaches the struggles of Coal Miners and the poor of the rural WV neighborhoods to his players and anyone who will listen. He also is a big contributor to cure for cancer as evidenced by his mothers foundation--The Norma Rae Cancer Research Foundation and the WVU Mary Babb Randolph Cancer Center. And at various times, he makes stops to other charities around the state of West Virginia. Bob Huggins' compassion for other people is why he belongs to West Virginia. What he is exhibiting to WV communities and charities is what we want from the young men and women who attend West Virginia University. The players on this basketball team are blessed. Blessed to learn from one of the best about basketball but even more blessed to learn how to be a better person.

The current Mountaineer basketball team currently has a 22-6 record. A record that may have people talking about Big 12 Coach of the Year. Those accolades pale in comparison to the compassion that the WV Coach exudes to the charities, fans, and his players. Mr. Huggins--you are right where you belong teaching others what is good about life outside the lines of a basketball floor.

 

[WVUDAD]

I never liked Huggins image when he was at Cincinnati, and wasnt sold on him when he first got here, but he has proved himself in my book. I used to call him drunken bobby, but he has matured into a good man, with a good heart. He is headed to the hall of fame as a coach, and will be noted there for not only wins, but his compassion and feeling.

 

[DBAR4WVU]

When Huggins was @ Cincy, I hated his teams - but always felt that at some point, GC would retire and he would make a great coach for WVU. But then he had the whole DD incident and then Beilein came along.... I still wanted Huggy, but JB was a good fit. Then Mich stole him away and everything fell into place. And while things have not always gone as I felt they should have - I still think he is the right fit for WV. He is sometimes prickly and tends to call out his players in the media more than maybe he should - but he also gets their attention and they either GET IT and come around or they are GONE. He is hall of famer and I would like to see him retire @ WVU - but not for a LOOOOOOOOOOOONG time.

 

[WvuDieHard]

Here is an article that I found today that really speaks volumes to the title of this thread. I think shows why this team plays so hard and works for everything they get.

The first thing to know about Bob Huggins is fairly obvious.

“I’m not very nostalgic,” he said.

The second thing to know about the West Virginia coach is that despite his contempt for contemplation, he is a storyteller. If there were a hall of fame for that, he’d be in it already and not waiting outside for some peculiar reason.

The raconteur is in his realm this week, back in the Sweet Sixteen for the first time since going to his second Final Four in 2010, back on the stage behind a microphone and before an audience. The fifth-seeded Mountaineers (25-9) play top-seeded Kentucky (36-0) in Thursday’s 9:40 p.m. CBS game at Quicken Loans Arena, and the preamble will likely include the umpteenth rendition of Huggins’ nearly fatal heart attack in 2002.

The story is famous now because it was Kentucky coach John Calipari’s cousin who hurried out of the back of the ambulance and rushed Huggins to the hospital. There’s debate over exactly what Calipari’s cousin said, and the coaches might hash that out in their press conferences Wednesday afternoon because the story is just that good, but there’s no debating this: It’s not the quintessential Huggins story.

The quintessential Huggins story goes back to his roots in east Ohio and a coal mining village that got its name because it sits between the towns of Uhrichsville and New Philadelphia. One day as a kid in Midvale, a town Huggins has described through the years as having 500 people, two stoplights and nine bars, he and a friend were walking somewhere to play basketball. A truck stopped alongside them and the older friend driving offered to take the two boys to the game. They hopped in the truck and noticed something unusual.

“Phil,” Huggins said to the driver, “you don’t have a rear view mirror.”

“We’re not going backwards,” Phil replied.

It’s stuck with Huggins through the years, the hirings, the resignation, the wins, the losses, the bittersweet departure from Kansas State so he could coach his alma mater, the past two forgettable seasons and his return to relevance this season.

Of course, he’s only worried about Thursday night.

“It’s kind of how I’ve lived my life,” Huggins said. “I don’t look backward. I don’t have a rear view mirror. I just look forward.”

It is the perfect anecdote for his profession, not just as a basketball coach who can’t get too high or dip too low, but for a man who shapes young lives and chisels boys into men who will one day have to navigate their own paths and all the undulations they encounter. Daxter Miles is a freshman nearing the end of a season that’s seen him start every game and soar and struggle. He heard the story about the rear view mirror early on, and it hasn’t left him, either.

“The past is the past, and whatever’s behind you, you leave that behind you,” he said. “You see what’s in front of you and you don’t worry about what’s behind you. You let it go and focus on what’s in front of you.”



***



The best part about the rear-view mirror story — It’s completely true.

Huggins told the rear view mirror story at a press conference last week, the day before WVU beat Buffalo in the NCAA tournament and in response to a question about coming back to Ohio, where he grew up and where he had his first three college head coaching jobs.

He has told the story three other times at NCAA tournaments through the years, and that number is smaller than the tally for the times he has told it at other events. Last week, when it received mainstream media attention, Huggins revealed his friend who hitched a ride was Gene Ford, who just retired this month as the head coach at Muskingum University.

“I definitely remember it, and we were laughing because that’s just normal,” said Ford, 63. “You closed your doors with bungee cords. You didn’t have to worry if it was locked. You just got a couple bungee cords and hooked them to either side.

“It was more comical than anything else. You weren’t thinking about relating it to life and all that stuff. It was just comical. He didn’t have a rear view mirror. What did you expect the guy to say? To me, it was a normal reaction.”

There weren’t many diversions in a place as small as Midvale, and there certainly wasn’t room for vanity. A dent in a car, a chip in a windshield, a wobbly bumper — none of it mattered.

“Never mind having a car,” said Ford, whose son Geno was fired Sunday after coaching the Bradley men’s team for four seasons. “You were lucky if you had four tires in Midvale. We had retreads. We thought retreads were the tires you had to buy.”

Another town in Tuscarawas County had a police department, and the cruiser in Barnhill was actually a Volkswagen. The only way residents or visitors knew they were at the Barnhill Police Department was the cardboard sign posted on a window.

“The easiest way to say it was that that’s just the way it was around there,” Ford said. “That’s not to say we lived in poverty. We took what we had and we made the most of it.”

The parents worked hard and kids played sports harder. They started either as soon as they woke up or once school was out and chores and homework were finished. They returned home when the sun had set, and it was a big deal when they were allowed to camp out on someone’s front porch. Football was big in the fall and baseball or Wiffle ball was it when the weather was warmer, but they’d try something different every now and then, too.

“We loved to play demolition derby on bicycles,” Ford said. “You should have seen Bob.”

Basketball was the sport they liked and played the most. There were courts and games everywhere, and it didn’t matter what month or season it was.

“In the winter, you’d shovel the courts off and play, but you could get in gyms all the time,” Ford said. “The school had a coal chute where the coal was delivered. We’d open the chute and jump down the chute into the janitor’s room and go out to the hallway and open the gym. Nobody cared. We’d never steal anything or destroy anything. We wanted to play basketball.”

When it was warmer, they’d travel to wherever they were going to play that day. Sometimes someone older would drive by, either on the way to a game or to work, and he’d offer a ride. One day, a truck stopped, the door swung open and Phil told Ford and Huggins to hop in.

Phil is as real as the story.

“Phil Westhafer,” Ford said. “He went on to become a teacher for many years.”

***



The International pickup truck was probably blue. Maybe red. Westhafer doesn’t recall exactly. He had so many. Actually, his family had so many, which meant he had access to so many.

“At that time, kids weren’t given things like they are today,” said Westhafer, 69, who taught fifth and sixth graders math, science and social studies for 31 years at New Philadelphia’s elementary school and coached middle schoolers and freshmen in just about every sport imaginable.

“Once you got your driver’s license, if you got a vehicle, it’d be a beater, something handed down, if you were fortunate. Most of us were lucky to get to use mom and dad’s car once a week or so.”

Westhafer’s uncle had an apple orchard and Westhafer and his parents would help. Sometimes Westhafer’s father would tell his son to drive a load of apples to where they were used to make cider. Other times Westhafer earned the privilege of using the truck for an afternoon or an evening.

He was always grateful, and he didn’t dare complain about the times he didn’t get the truck. He was raised better than that, and he learned a lot from his father, Marion, who had a determined and familiar outlook for life.

“My dad was the type who thought you don’t regret anything you do, and whatever you do you have to be responsible for,” Westhafer said. “That was his philosophy, more or less, and kids at that time really were responsible for what they did. We got it from our parents. In a small town like that, anything you did, you didn’t get away with it.”

So he’s pretty sure he told Huggins and Ford to never look back, and he has no doubt he picked them up quite often on the way to a game or back home. The specifics, though, are unclear because Westhafer hadn’t heard the story before a stranger asked him about it last week.

He never knew one irregularity meant so much, but what he does know is a couple of the family trucks would lose their rear view mirrors.

“That was the case from time to time,” he said. “It was always a beater type of truck that was getting on in years. Nobody really cared about what their cars or trucks were like. For me, it was just a way to get around at that time as a teenager. We all had more important things to be worried about.”