MORGANTOWN — At so many levels, you want to believe Bob Huggins is as he seems — tough, profane, driven … a maniacal coach in search of a national championship.
But there is another side, one he too often keeps hidden for whatever macho reason he has.
It is a soft side, an emotional side, a side that slipped out Monday night after losing to Connecticut in a game that ended with his fangs sharpened, taking a pair of technical fouls that led to his ejection in his dejection over losing to the Huskies.
It is, we believe, the side he showed his basketball team after the game, a side he showed the listeners of his radio show, as he let them see exactly why he coaches, why he is at West Virginia and why he is so disappointed when his players lose sight of what their real value is.
“I don’t know if they know what they mean to this state,” he said, just as play-by-play voice Tony Caridi was trying to sign off on the post-game show. “I told them in there. You have a chance to be special. This club may have, could have, should have …”
His voice trailed off for a moment, but he was no longer talking to the radio audience, but back there again with his team, the words aimed straight to them, even though they could not hear them now.
“Very few people have a chance to be special, particularly in West Virginia,” Huggins said. “Pittsburgh had great basketball, but it was not the Steelers. Cincinnati had great basketball when I was there, but it was not the Reds.”
Ah, but West Virginia. It has one thing.
“We have a chance to represent this state and bring so much pride and joy,” Huggins said.
By now you could picture yourself sitting there in the locker room, Devin Ebanks to your left, Da’Sean Butler to your right, Wellington Smith across the room from you and Huggins standing there in the middle, his voice dripping with emotion.
“I had the best team in the country in Cincinnati, not even close,” Huggins said. “There were pros everywhere. We had the best player in the country.”
He was talking about Kenyon Martin. The year was 1999-2000, and Huggins’ team was No. 1 and Martin was the second-leading scorer all-time for the Bearcats, only the legendary Oscar Robertson ahead of him.
Before that season, Martin wasn’t sure about whether he should leave early for the NBA.
“He came into my office one day and said, ‘Hugs, what should I do?’ I told him I’d look into where he stood,” Huggins continued. “I found out. They said he would be No. 18 to 22 in the draft. I told him and asked him, ‘What do you want to do?’”
This is where Huggins is about to make his point.
“He looked at me and said, ‘I want to win the national championship,’” Huggins recalled. “He got a tear. I said, ‘Kenyon, I think you answered your own question.’”
Martin stayed. Later that season, he went out and broke his leg. Huggins went out on the court.
“He’s hugging me, crying,” Huggins remembered, the picture of coach and player setting in. “Never once did he say ‘There goes my pro career.’”
Something else was on Kenyon Martin’s mind at that decisive moment in his life.
“‘I’m not going to win the national championship,’” Huggins quoted Martin as saying. “‘Why, why did this happen?’
“He was crying on my shoulder. It had nothing to do with being the No. 1 pick in the draft. It was a single-mindedness of purpose,” Huggins said.
He was talking to his team. He was talking to Devin Ebanks, who can leave early at the end of this season.
“This might not happen again,” he said. “All those students at the Seton Hall game (in Morgantown) may never have another Top 10 team. Everyone assumes they will, but it’s hard.”
Huggins’ point is that this Mountaineer team right now is at a crossroads. It has a chance to do something special, a chance to win a national championship, for themselves, but more for the state.
“Everyone in the NBA will tell you the greatest time they had was playing in college,” Huggins said. “Like, I’m usually irate when we lose. I detest losing.
“But right now I’m hurt because I know what this means to the people in our state and their being able to puff their chest out and say ‘That’s our team!’
“I came back here for a reason. I didn’t come for anything else other than I love this state and I love the people. It takes a piece out of you.”
Now you know the other side of Bob Huggins. Remember it, for it probably won’t be seen again until he wins a championship at West Virginia.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
