Huggins Has Changed From A New York Guy To A Kansas City Guy
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MORGANTOWN -- Once upon a time, come March and conference tournament time, Bob Huggins always had one song dancing around in his head.
"Start spreading the news. I'm leaving today. I want to be a part of it. New York, New York."
He was a Sinatra kind of guy because he was heading to Madison Square Garden and the Big East Tournament and, quite honestly, there was nothing like it.
But these days, as West Virginia gets ready to open the Tournament with a 7 p.m. game Wednesday night, he admits he's become a Wilbert Harrison kind of guy.
"Going to Kansas City. Kansas City here I come."
Huggins admits he never thought he'd be able to recapture the thrill of playing in the Big East Tournament, which really was one of the great sporting events in the country during the Big East's glory days.
"I didn't think anything could compare or come close to comparing to what used to happen in the Garden when the Big East played the tournament in New York, but Kansas City has been a great place," Huggins said. "They've created a very good venue."
Not that it can ever replace the post-season tournament in what is known modestly as "The World's Most Famous Arena," at least not in Huggins' mind.
"I can tell you this, one of the most moving experiences I've ever experienced in athletics was winning the Big East Tournament, standing there and looking around the most famous arena in the world and seeing a sea of gold and the guys there, tears running down their face while singing 'Country Roads,'" Huggins said.
"It's hard to surpass that."
That well may be the greatest postseason moment in WVU basketball history, considering they lost when they got to the NCAA Final with Jerry West and the NIT, which they won for a national championship back in the really old days of college basketball, didn't quite have the pomp and circumstance that comes with post-season play as it is today.
For Huggins, a man who coached more than 900 winning games, who has stood there for his induction into the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame, who twice been to the Final Four, for him to see that moment as one of the most moving experiences of his athletic life speaks volumes.
Maybe it was just that team, with Da'Sean Butler sinking three game-winning shots, with the physical, shut down defense Huggins loves so much that made it that way, but more than likely it was the city, the venue and the team that he had guided to that victory.
If he could pull off another miracle this year, however, that would have to stand alongside the 2010 team. Kansas City, as noted, has done an amazing job of building this tournament to rank among the best events in sports, just as the Big 12 has risen to the top of the nation's NCAA basketball conferences.
To win there -- this year -- after all they have been through would be a moment for the ages, this being a gerrymander senior laden team of mostly the common man, not the 7-foot wonders of Alcindor or Ewing, no Oscar or Jerry West or Maravich.
Just hard playing, personable players like Emmitt Matthews Jr, Erik Stevenson, Kedrian Johnson, Joe Toussaint, Tre Mitchell, Jimmy Bell Jr. who love their fans almost as much as their fans love them, who suffered through a five-game conference losing streak that threatened to take the pre-season from them long before they got there.
But it was a team that wouldn't accept that, a team which grew as the season wore on and comes into the Big 12 Tournament having won seven of its last 12 games in the toughest conference in the land and who now has its sights set on using the tournament to prepare for the NCAAs.
"Obviously, we've gotten better and better as the season's gone on,'" Huggins said. "I don't think if we were playing now, we would have lost the games we lost earlier."
It's going to be a war, for if WVU can get past Texas Tech, a team it split with during the regular season, each winning on the other's home court, No. 1 seed Kansas awaits the winner and this time the game will be played on the other side of the border, in Kansas City, Missouri.
Maybe Huggins can write a new tune that would go something like this:
"Start spreading the news. I'm leaving today. Going to Kansas City. Kansas City here I come."