By Bob Hertzel
MORGANTOWN — A couple of days before West Virginia’s season opening basketball game against Loyola of Maryland at the Coliseum, a game the Mountaineers would win, 83-60, freshman Danny Jennings was in an awful way.
It’s that way sometimes, when you are a freshman, off in a far off place with as different a setting as you could get from his native New York City. School is hard, but at least you don’t have Bob Huggins as a coach.
Basketball is harder, and that’s where Huggins is. He is a demanding task master, far more demanding than anything any player has ever had before, his expectations high, his personality volatile and his vocabulary X-rated.
“If you could have seen Danny three days ago you would have wondered if he’d be around here today for the game,” Huggins said.
His head was spinning, his tail was dragging.
It was time to put away the macho man image that Huggins likes to strut in public and to help ease Jennings through a tough time. He knew what he wanted of him, knew where he wanted him to go, and understood why he was so low.
And so it was that he called him and reached back into his file of videos from his Cincinnati days, looking through the volumes until he found the one he wanted of Eric Hicks.
You have to understand Eric Hicks’ story. He was a big kid like Jennings, 6-6, 230 while Jennings measures up at 6-8, 260. As a freshman at Cincinnati in 2002-03 he averaged but 2.3 points a game and 1.3 blocks while playing 13.6 minutes, which is kind of not far off what you might have projected for Jennings before his debut.
During that first year, Hicks suffered the same kind of freshman depression that Jennings was suffering and left the team, but returned briefly.
Huggins probably made that point to Jennings as he spoke to him about Hicks, but also showed him what he expected of him, a tape of Hicks diving on the floor and saving a ball that led to a dunk.
By the time he was through, Jennings was back to his normal self, which is a kid who is happy to have escaped a terrible background in New York that included a mother with a drug problem and a number of foster homes, many not pleasant experiences.
“He told me the tape was very inspirational,” Huggins said.
“I’d been down for a couple of days, but that changed my day,” Jennings admitted.
Hicks improved each year, which is exactly what Jennings is going to have to do, but what he lacks in smoothness and understanding of the offensive concepts Huggins is trying to teach he makes up for in enthusiasm, brute strength and athleticism.
He entered his first collegiate game with WVU down seven points and immediately lit a torch with a foul, a blocked shot, as physical a rebound and put-back that you’ll see this season as his white headband was knocked from around his head.
There was nothing subtle, just raw animal magnetism in the way he played the game.
“I just go out block shots, rebound and attack the offensive boards …HARD!” he said.
Scoring?
That’s for the pretty boys. He’ll leave it Da’Sean Butler and Casey Mitchell and Devin Ebanks, when he straightens out his personal issues.
“That’s better than scoring,” Jennings said.
Jennings finished with 9 points, 3 blocks and 12 rebounds, the first WVU freshman to ever get 12 rebounds in his first game and the seventh player in WVU history to do so. For many years freshman could not play varsity ball, so they accomplished the feat as sophomores, including Jerry West and Rod Thorn.
The Mountaineers had started slowly, but Jennings took care of that single-handedly.
It started with a timeout Huggins had called. He had not yet really seen Huggins at his best during a time out.
“He was screaming and I took it to heart,” Jennings said. “He was telling us those guys are nothing compared to the Big East and we need to kill them.”
Jennings went at as if he were Huggins’ paid assassin and with each move he made the crowd became more vocal. He changed the atmosphere in the Coliseum and he changed the game.
“Thank God he came in, the way we were playing,” Huggins said. “It would have been a long week if he hadn’t come in and played like he played.”
Actually, it’s going to be a long week anyway, considering they don’t play again until next Tuesday in Charleston against The Citadel.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
