MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - It's hard to believe that two college basketball coaches who have coached as long and as successfully as Bob Huggins and Cliff Ellis have never faced each other on the hardwood.
 
Well, that is going to change Monday night when two of the game's winningest coaches will finally match wits for the first time in the College Basketball Invitational (CBI) quarterfinal game at the WVU Coliseum.
 
Huggins won his 860^thcareer contest last Wednesday night against Grand Canyon on the same night Ellis' Coastal Carolina Chanticleers presented their coach with win No. 841 against Howard. 
 
That's a combined 1,701 victories between the two of them!
 
Ellis' college coaching career began in 1972 at Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tennessee, before he moved on to South Alabama and then to Clemson, Auburn and now Coastal Carolina.
 
Ellis coached South Alabama for nine years where he led the Jaguars to a couple of NCAA Tournament trips and a pair of NIT appearances.
 
In 1985, Ellis took over at Clemson and coached the Tigers for 10 seasons, leading them to three NCAA Tournament and five NIT appearances.
 
Another move to Auburn in 1995 preceded three more NCAA appearances and four more NIT berths.
 
And since taking over at Coastal Carolina, Ellis had led the Chanticleers to NCAA Tournament trips in 2014 and 2015.
 
In all, he's taken 10 teams to the NCAA Tournament and 13 to the NIT, including a visit to the WVU Coliseum in 1994 when his Tigers knocked off West Virginia 96-79 to advance to the NIT quarterfinals.
 
Ellis also coached one other game at the Coliseum on Jan. 31, 1982 when West Virginia beat his South Alabama team 65-59.
 
This season, Ellis' Chanticleers finished sixth in the Sun Belt Conference with a 9-9 regular season record, their best finish in the league since making the move from the Big South Conference three years ago.
 
After getting knocked out in the opening round of the Sun Belt tournament by Louisiana Monroe, Coastal defeated Howard 81-72 last Wednesday night for its 16^thvictory of the season.
 
Junior guard Tyrell Gumbs-Frater came off the bench to score 22 points and 6-7 forward Zac Cuthbertson contributed 18 points and a game-high 13 rebounds.
 
Cuthbertson, an Eastern Community College transfer who originally hails from New Bern, North Carolina, leads the Chanticleers in scoring (18.2 ppg.) and rebounding (8.3 rpg.).
 
DeVante Jones, a 6-1 freshman guard, is averaging 13.7 points while Gumbs-Frater is scoring at a 10 points-per-game clip.
 
Coastal Carolina's best stretch of play came in late January when it ran off victories over Appalachian State, Little Rock, Arkansas State, Louisiana Monroe and Louisiana before losing by 20 at UT Arlington on Feb. 7.
 
The Chanticleers dropped four straight after that but have since won four of their last seven.
 
West Virginia, meanwhile, has been playing significantly better since Huggins started paring down his roster in mid-February. Now at 10 players, Huggins' group has won five of its last eight games to boost its overall record to 15-20.
 
In its last nine games, WVU is scoring at a much higher clip and is also taking much better care of the basketball.
 
Huggins said following Wednesday night's victory over Grand Canyon that he got so sick and tired of watching his young team throw the ball into the stands that he re-introduced some old drills that his father used decades ago when he was a high school coach.
 
"We were doing stops and starts, pivots, reverse pivots and full pivots, back pivots and everything else and then we put them over on the toss-back with a guy in front of them," Huggins explained. "So they had to pass the ball past the guy who was guarding them into the toss-back and have it come back to them.
 
"I think it's really helped us," he continued. "They kind of like it too – it's kind of fun for them. It's different and at this time of year you kind of look for something different."
 
It's working. The Mountaineers were once turning the ball over at a 16.2-per-game clip, but have reduced that number by two turnovers during their most recent nine games.
 
Consequently, the team is also scoring at a much higher rate. West Virginia is averaging 80.8 points per game since Feb. 23, an increase of 10.2 points over its average of 70.6 points through its first 26 contests of the season.
 
Most of this is coming from junior guard Jermaine Haley, and freshmen Jordan McCabe and Emmitt Matthews Jr.
 
Haley has boosted his scoring average from 3.6 points before the Baylor game on Feb. 23 to 7.0 points heading into Monday night's game. McCabe's scoring average has gone from 2.7 to 5.6, while Matthews Jr. has seen a 1.8 boost in his scoring average from 3.1 to 4.9.
 
In the meantime, freshman forward Derek Culver has been able to maintain his double-double average of 11.5 points and 10.2 rebounds per game.
 
"I think every time these guys play, they get something out of it," Huggins said. "I don't think Derek and Jordan played particularly well for them (against Grand Canyon). Most guys get 10 rebounds and you say they played pretty well, but we've come to expect a whole lot more from Derek, and we've come to expect a whole lot more from Jordan."
 
Monday's game will get underway at 7 p.m. Tickets are still available and can be purchased for just $10 by logging on to WVUGAME.com.
 
There will be free parking at the Coliseum for the game.
 
A free live stream will once again be made available through WVUsports.com. Fans with Roku or Apple TV can also download the West Virginia app to watch the game on their televisions.
 
The Mountaineer Sports Network from Learfield IMG College will have live radio coverage beginning at 6 p.m. on affiliates throughout West Virginia and online via WVUsports.com and the popular app WVU Gameday.