June 12 Notebook
June 12, 2007 12:14 AM | General
June 12, 2007
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| Bob Huggins |
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Bob Huggins recently offered his philosophy on scheduling in an extended interview with Tony Caridi that aired last week on the Metro News Radio Network.
According to Huggins, his primary objective is for the Mountaineers to be on television.
“We’re looking for TV opportunities,” Huggins said. “We’re going to look for opportunities to play a CBS game against a nationally ranked opponent. We are going to go to events that are national television events.
“My philosophy has always been we’re going to play at home or we’re going to play on national TV.”
Huggins doesn’t think either will be a problem at West Virginia.
“At a place like West Virginia with the great tradition and what John (Beilein) has done and the coaches before him, we’re not going to have an issue doing that,” Huggins said.
Huggins believes another appealing aspect his basketball teams offer television is an exciting brand of basketball that is well received by fans.
“People are going to like our style of play,” Huggins said. “It’s going to be a little faster – a little more aggressive compared to other teams in college basketball. We’ve been very marketable in a large degree because of style of play.”
This year’s schedule is nearly finished, says Huggins.
“It was pretty much done when I got here,” he said. “We may have added a game but that’s about it. They were well ahead of the curve on scheduling. The schedule this year is really going to be the past staff’s schedule more than our schedule.”
Briefly:
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| Billy Hahn |
Bob Huggins in Caridi's interview last week thought the number was at least three. Interestingly enough, a quick check of the last 15 national champs in men’s basketball shows that all of them had at least two NBA-level players with North Carolina (2005) and Kentucky (1996) having seven players that eventually earned spots on NBA rosters.
North Carolina’s entire starting five in 2005 has spent some time in the league and includes current pros Rashad McCants, Sean May and Raymond Felton.
Four of Kentucky’s starters on the 1996 national championship team made it to the league including multi-year players Derek Anderson, Antoine Walker, Walter McCarty and Tony Delk.
Kentucky in 1998 and UCLA in 1995 had six players eventually earn spots on NBA rosters.
The two most recent NCAA champs with the least number of NBA players was Jim Boeheim’s 2003 Syracuse team with Hakim Warrick and Carmelo Anthony and Nolan Richardson’s 1994 Arkansas team that featured forward Corliss Williamson and reserve Clint McDaniel.
Incidentally, Hahn’s 2002 Maryland team that beat Indiana for the NCAA title had four players move on to the league: Chris Wilcox, Lonny Baxter, Juan Dixon and Steve Blake.
During the fifth inning of Louisville’s 20-2 win over the Cowboys, Bennett was told by NCAA baseball committee representative Gene McArtor to vacate Jim Patterson Stadium because he was violating NCAA policies concerning live Internet updates during championship events.
Bennett was told before Sunday’s game that he was not permitted to conduct blogs and after conferring with his editors he chose to file reports at the beginning of the game, according to today’s Courier-Journal.
The newspaper is considering its legal alternatives.
“It’s a real question that we’re being deprived of our right to report within the First Amendment from a public facility,” said Jon L. Fleischaker, the newspaper’s attorney.
Lately there have been other “new media” issues to consider.
Last year, Notre Dame made it a policy of restricting the amount of footage media outlets were allowed to show of its coaches’ press conferences. Blue & Gold Illustrated, a Notre Dame fan magazine, was replaying football coach Charlie Weis’ weekly press conferences in its entirety on its paid subscription web service.
The school deemed this practice in direct competition with it’s free video streaming service made available on the school’s official athletic web site.
Some schools have also refused granting credential requests to web sites that also sponsor message boards. These issues are beginning to take up more time in conference meetings and professional workshops.
Beilein had both at West Virginia. In fact, the radio and television shows produced by MSN and the West Virginia Radio Corporation are second to none.
In its present form, the Big East is a conference built on compromises. The solutions to the problems and the issues that have come before it have been imperfect. It is my firm belief that the Big East will always remain an imperfect conference.
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| Owen Schmitt |
-- Former West Virginia forward Marcus Goree recently signed a three-year contract with CSKA Moscow of the Euroleague. Goree, a 6-8 forward, has spent time in the Euroleague with Frankfurt, Tel Aviv and Benneton and among players with 90 or more Euroleague games this decade, has the ninth-best career scoring average at 15.4 points per game.
Last year for Benneton, Goree averaged 12.7 points and 6.4 rebounds per game.
Goree last played at West Virginia in 2000 for former coach Gale Catlett.
-- The Washington Mystics of the WNBA signed former West Virginia center Yelena Leuchanka on June 6. The Mystics are in action Tuesday night against New York at 7 pm in a game that will be televised nationally on ESPN2.
-- Jarod Rine, the 2003 Big East baseball player of the year, has caught on with the Washington Wild Things of the Frontier League. The former ninth-round pick spent four seasons in the Baltimore Orioles organization, never advancing higher than Single A.
Rine is hitting .292 with two home runs and 13 RBI in 17 games so far with the Wild Things.
One-time West Virginia standouts Zac Cline and Casey Bowling are also playing in the Frontier League with the Slippery Rock Sliders.
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| Gene Corum |
The first speech Corum read verbatim from a Pitt student newspaper article in 1961 discussing the Western Pa “garbage” the Mountaineers were attracting down in Morgantown. West Virginia upset the heavily favored Panthers 20-6 in one of the more memorable games in the 100-year history of the Backyard Brawl.
Corum’s other great speech came at Syracuse to end the 1962 campaign.
After going over halftime adjustments and strategy, Corum turned deadly serious just as his team was about to run back out onto the field. Woodeshick picks up the story.
“(Corum) says, ‘Fellas I hate to tell you this but somebody just broke into the dressing room and stole all of your wallets. All of your valuables are gone.’
“Well we were one pissed off team,” Woodeshick laughed. “We just killed Syracuse in the second half.”
Afterward when the team returned to the locker room, their wallets, watches, rings and jewelry were just as they had left them before the game.
Gene Corum certainly knew which buttons to push!
Have a great week!
Note the views and opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of West Virginia University or the Mountaineer Sports Network.
