MORGANTOWN — There are those who would have you believe that it starts today, with a 1 p.m. exhibition game at the Coliseum against a Mountain State team that features the world’s tallest basketball player at 7 feet, 8 inches.
They would tell you that West Virginia’s run for the Big East and national title starts today.
There are others who would argue that it does not begin until the games start to count, until Loyola of Maryland comes in next Sunday. Others still would contend that it doesn’t begin until Thanksgiving, when the Mountaineers head west for the 76 Classic Tournament and some major competition on a major stage.
And then there are those who know that it really began in April of 2002 when John Beilein was named West Virginia basketball coach and began rebuilding the once proud program that had rotted and decayed to the bottom of the Big East.
If the team that takes the floor today is different in its structure and unrecognizable as a Beilein team as it begins its third season under Bob Huggins, that is not to diminish what Beilein began and what Huggins carried on.
The senior leadership that is here — Da’Sean Butler and Wellington Smith — were brought in by Beilein, but had to buy into what Huggins was selling, as did Alex Ruoff and Joe Alexander before them.
The transition would have been harder, longer if that had not happened.
Butler today is a preseason All-Big East choice, a player who would land on All-America teams in the postseason. He understands the change, a move from finesse to muscle, from jump shooting to rebounding, from 1-3-1 to in-your-face, man-to-man defense.
It wasn’t a matter of one being right and one being wrong, any more than heavy metal is any more correct than classical music. It’s a matter of taste, and in this case, the heavy metal is the game Huggins brought back to his alma mater.
“I didn’t know what to think,” Butler admitted, speaking of the transition. “It was kind of difficult. But I figured this was a great place to be. I had a great year then and, regardless, I’ll have a great year next year as well.”
Just being named coach doesn’t guarantee acceptance.
Huggins had his reputation preceding him.
“We knew he’d been a great coach,” Butler said.
And he had Jerry West, the greatest player ever at West Virginia.
“Jerry West was telling everyone he was a great coach,” Butler recalled.
That was enough for the holdovers. Oh, practices were different, harder, more challenging. Rebounding and defense were emphasized, which ran counter clockwise from Beilein’s theories.
And the treadmill stood guard over practices, insuring that players did as expected for fear of spending 44 seconds going at full speed on the contraption.
Huggins changed things, to be sure.
“I’d be a different kind of player. I still think I’d be a great player,” Butler said. “But I’d be a shooter.”
Huggins understood how to take over a new program. He’d done it too many times before not to be able to do it.
And here he was taking over a talented team, if not his kind of team.
“When I went to Walsh, it had never won before,” he said.
He took the small, Midwestern school and in three years went from 14-16 to 34-1.
That landed him at Akron.
“They had not known how to win. I had 14 of 15 players back, but that’s not always a good thing when have been losing. The only player I lost that year was the leading scorer in the country,” Huggins said. “They were also on probation.”
His first season at Akron he went 12-14, then had four straight 20-win seasons, leading him to Cincinnati.
“Cincinnati was also on probation,” Huggins recalled, “but it was easier because I didn’t have 14 players back from a losing team.”
When he left there, he went to Kansas State and built an immediate winner, before the job opened at West Virginia, his alma mater.
“I love it here. I love the state,” he said.
And, despite the work and methodology, his players love him.
“For some reason,” he said, with a sly, knowing smile, “I have not had a lot of rebellion.”
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
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