A Tug on the Heart
April 06, 2007 07:16 PM | General
April 6, 2007
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The tug was just too great on Bob Huggins’ heart to turn his back on his roots – the place where he was loved, respected and admired long before he was taking teams to the Final Four and being invited on the Dan Patrick Show. Almost Heaven came calling one final time and he had to answer.
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| Bob Huggins poses with the Mountaineer during his introductory press conference on Friday, April 6.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks |
“At Cincinnati and at other places the people that really liked Huggs liked him because he coached basketball,” said former WVU teammate Warren Baker. “He’s back where he’s got family who really care about him who knew him in school before he became who he is now.”
Unless you are a West Virginian, it’s really impossible to comprehend what those rugged mountains mean to us. It’s like no other place anywhere.
“West Virginia people are different than anybody else in the world,” said Baker. “I’m a West Virginian – I haven’t left and I won’t because of that. We’re very loyal people and we love people who are dedicated to our program and to our cause. His lifelong dream has become a reality.”
It wasn’t easy for Huggins to leave Kansas State. He agonized over the decision because there were so many unfulfilled promises to the people there who wanted so badly to see him revive a once proud basketball program that had fallen on tough times.
There was also the issue of his players – what he has always cared about most. It wasn’t an accident that Kenyon Martin demanded that the University of Cincinnati remove his retired jersey from the basketball arena when Huggins’ contract wasn’t renewed. Huggins is tough and demanding but his players have always stood behind him.
Someone at Kansas State remarked that the place may have been right but the timing wasn’t when Huggins decided to take the West Virginia job. In his heart Huggins knew that the time was now or never if he was ever going to return home.
“I knew he was going to have some tribulations about coming back after being out at Kansas State for just one year,” Robertson said. “I called him on Tuesday when I found out that (John) Beilein was leaving and I told him, ‘I know you’re going to have some reservations about leaving Manhattan so soon after just getting there and the people there being so good to you, but I really feel in my heart that if you get the offer you’ve just got to go back to Mountaineer country.’”
Former Mountaineer teammate Maurice Robinson was ecstatic when his son called his cell phone and told him he had heard on the TV that Huggins was taking the West Virginia job.
“We’ve been waiting on this for years,” Robinson said. “It’s been a long time coming. I told my wife that we’ve got to call and get season tickets tomorrow. I haven’t been a season ticket holder for a lot of years.”
Gary McPherson, today a member of the athletic department’s fundraising team, was once in Huggins’ shoes as the head coach at VMI in the mid 1960s. A West Virginia native, the attraction of going home led to one of the most difficult decisions of his life.
“I left a head coaching job in the Southern Conference to be an assistant at West Virginia – a team we had defeated two out of the last four times we played them. I didn’t go to school here but the family and friends … there are just intangibles here that you have great pride in your state and your University.”
All of those reasons will ring hollow to the Kansas State fans that have invested so much emotional energy into Bob Huggins’ brief tenure with the Wildcats. Anything Huggins said today in his introductory press conference won’t take away the sting of his departure.
West Virginians went through the same thing earlier this week when a man greatly admired was willing to spend $2.5 million out of his own pocket to leave.
So we all move on, perhaps a little more jaded, but certainly more aware that our emotions sometimes come with a price. Having one of your own wanting to return home so quickly makes this much easier for West Virginians to handle.
In that regard West Virginia is extremely fortunate – we’ve got two of our very own in Bob Huggins and Rich Rodriguez leading the basketball and football programs.
“Huggs is our boy, there is no question about that,” Maurice Robinson said. “The last time he was up for the job we were rooting for him to get it. It is time for someone from our generation to be in the athletic department.”
“You tell them to take care of him up there – look out for him because he’s one of our own,” says Tony Robertson. “Give him what he needs and he will make us all proud.”
