Man ought to be properly remembered. Tell me the time he didn’t get it done.

The turn comes quick, far faster than most people are capable of preparing for it. We’re humans after all. We’re not necessarily programmed to understand that we - our work and ourselves - are often disposable in the eyes of others. Everybody knows this feeling. After the end of a long relationship, there’s a moment of sitting there thinking, “What just happened?” as if it really had just happened, as if it wasn’t the accumulation of a thousand small disagreements. Such a verbose way of describing a small fleeting moment of madness.

How else does one explain a brief flirtation with the long knives for Bob Huggins? I saw it today with my own eyes, an attempt to insist that Huggins was somehow responsible for the allegedly grim reality that our basketball team this year - a year removed from a glorious run to the Final Four - really isn’t that good. And not only are they not good, but they’re unlikely to be better next year, when the team loses its best defender (John Flowers), best point guard (Joe Mazzulla), best grinder (Cam Thoroughman), and best son-of-the-NBA-logo (Jonnie West). Oh, and Casey Mitchell, who is better left not thought about, as any attempt to understand the man results of pounding headaches and nosebleeds.

On the one hand, the critic was substantively right. Huggins success at WVU has been fueled by largely by players that were not his own: Joe Alexander in his first year, Da’Sean Butler in his third, with Joe Mazzulla, Alexander Ruoff, Darris Nichols, Wellington Smith, John Flowers, Cam Thoroughman and others offering significant contributions for runs made to the Sweet Sixteen and the Final Four. Huggins’s recruits have been…shall-we-say…less than inspiring. Yes, he brought Devin Ebanks and Kevin Jones, but Ebanks is gone after only two years (and, like Alexander, stuck in the NBDL) and Jones, now the focus of other teams instead of being a third-banana (as he was during his first two seasons) looks very, very containable. Truck Bryant has never turned into the harder-than-hell-nosed point guard capable of getting to the basket at will. Deniz Kilicli looks unlikely to turn into the low-post force we were imagining, if only because it takes him twenty minutes and a Power Point presentation of the available options to decide what he’s going to do with the ball whenever he gets it. This year’s recruiting class was an utter disaster, with Darrious Curry being told he’d be unable to ever play the game (owing to a diagnosis of a disease now in apparent dispute), David Nyarsuk failed to make the grades, and prized recruit Noah Cottrill apparently chose other less painful pursuits. Only Kevin Noreen has seen the floor, and his time has been limited mightily despite having a nose for both the basketball and the hoop. To put that another way, Bob Huggins doesn’t like playing freshmen unless they’re exemplary players. Which makes it unlikely, although perhaps necessary, that our incoming class eats up minutes next season.

That’s enough apparently, enough for the knives to slowly get pulled across the whetstones. Yes, the team got a Sweet Sixteen, and then, two years later, a Big East Championship and an appearance in the Final Four, but what about this year? What about next year? What about the year after that? It’s no longer a matter of what have you done for us lately, but rather, what are you doing for us next? And if the answer to that isn’t, “At least as much as before but probably more!” then there are fans willing to move on.

The fear - here anyway, as we’ve written about this on numerous occasions - is that this mindset, this “Goddammit do something now! I want instant gratification now, now, now!” mindset, is taking hold of Mountaineer Nation, and that even somebody as immediately beloved as Dana Holgorsen is going to face the same wall of resentment and criticism if he can’t meet whatever goals the fanbase sets for him, no matter how unrealistic or potentially unattainable. (“Whaddya mean we can’t win the national championship ever single year?!?!”) Meanwhile we miss the accomplishments that are genuinely worth appreciating.

Any fan ought to be able to recognize that this year’s team just isn’t that good. But suppose Huggins can steer them to 20 wins, plus another victory in the opening round of the Big East Tournament. If this year’s team makes the NCAA tournament (and I’m hypothesizing that 21 wins with our brutal schedule would be enough to do it), wouldn’t that represent an incredible accomplishment given this team’s limitations? Even if it does represent an unrealistic dream - and hoo baby, does 21 wins really seem unrealistic after that loss to Marquette - its realization would be incredible. That we’d have our fans missing that reality because the team hadn’t returned to the Sweet Sixteen, Elite Eight, Final Four, or whatever the perceived goal was at the beginning of the imaginary season that they had privately imagined would represent a tragedy of fandom of the highest order.

So yes, we’re humans, and yes, we’re disposable, but abandoning this year’s team, or worse, its coach, merely for the crime of not measuring up to one of the greatest teams in Mountaineer history would be an awful thing. Those fans headed in that direction really need to pull over to the side of the road to consider, if only briefly, the ramifications of such a hellbent strategy.

This is Bob Huggins fourth year at WVU. He has been, by any measure, wildly successful: a Final Four, a Sweet Sixteen, a Big East Championship, players that have gotten to the pros, big wins, great seasons.

Next year, something changes. It will be his first without any players recruited by John Beilein, WVU’s former coach, a cerebral leader who recruited players capable of fitting into his offensive and defensive systems. When Huggins arrived, it was fair to say that fans imagined that his players would be the NBA variety he seemed to churn out at Cincinnati and then at Kansas State. Meanwhile, the guys Beilein had brought in would occupy more and more of the bench as Huggins five-star talents took the playing time.

That hasn’t happened to nearly the degree that one might have assumed at the outset. Beilein recruited guys have ended up being a huge component of Huggins success at WVU, while the players the current coach recruited himself have been somewhat more mercurial. If you’d asked fans four years ago if the following statement was true, those fans would have scoffed, but now? Here’s the statement: a team of players recruited by Beilein and coached by Huggins would easily beat a team of players recruited and coached by Huggins. Your starting lineups:

Beilein’s Recruits
1. Darris Nichols
2. Joe Mazzulla
3. Da’Sean Butler
4. John Flowers
5. Joe Alexander

Huggins’ Recruits
1. Truck Bryant
2. Casey Mitchell
3. Kevin Jones
4. Devin Ebanks
5. Deniz Kilicli

Although both teams have their weaknesses, I’d take the guys Beilein recruited over the guys Huggins did.

Woah There Sport
Before anybody gets huffy, it ought to be noted that I would take the guys Beilein recruited while still assuming Huggins as their coach. Which isn’t to knock Beilein. His coaching here was tremendous. Anybody who knocks his Elite Eight run is conveniently forgetting that he was starting guys who weren’t wanted anywhere else. That he got back to the Sweet Sixteen a year later, only to lose on a heart-breaking last second shot, is a testament to his greatness as a coach.

But Huggins has produced even better results, the Final Four the most notable amongst them.

The Issue
I was playing basketball at the Rec Center the other day when I heard two young guys saying, quite passionately, that Huggins was beyond criticism. They were insistent that every problem the team had was the result of malcontent players and that every success it had was the result of Huggins leadership. That may or may not be true, but the idea that a coach is beyond criticism made me skip a beat. Idiotic fans screaming “What have you done for me lately?” after every loss don’t deserve to be taken seriously, but a coach beyond critical evaluation?

Which is where we get to the following: if you’re going to knock Huggins for something, it has to be his recruiting. His teams have often relied on guys recruited by Beilein to deliver the goods. Even this year - one in which Huggins’s Kevin Jones was supposed to be a leader - we’ve seen the emergence of John Flowers, the steadying hand of Joe Mazzulla, and the grinding Cam Thoroughman contributing enormously. Jones has been good, but as the focal point of defenses, he hasn’t nearly been the player he was during his first two seasons (and now he seems obsessed with shooting three-pointers that only rarely go in).

Meanwhile, Huggins guys have been…umm…good…ish? Devin Ebanks went to the NBA. We’ve already discussed Jones. Deniz Kilicli keeps getting better. But Truck Bryant spent the majority of last night on the bench. Dalton Pepper has looked good the past two games, but only because he has been forced to the floor. Casey Mitchell, currently suspended, is the one that forced Pepper back into playing time. Dan Jennings is gone. This year’s draft class has been a disaster for various reasons beyond Huggins control.

So my conclusion is a strange one that I’m not sure even I believe: I’d rather Huggins coach a team of guys recruited by Beilein than a team of his own choosing. Beilein only rarely recruited “athletes” as we know them. He recruited glue guys, thinkers, shooters, grinders, guys who were good at lots of things without necessarily being great at anything. Huggins, meanwhile, is a coach capable of taking all of those goods and turning them into greats. The mix of the two has produced astounding results for anybody who knew West Virginia basketball before Beilein took over.

Today, Dick Vitale listed his top three choices for national coach of the year at this point in the season. He listed Jim Boeheim, Steve Fisher, and Mick Cronin. I can’t (or rather, don’t want to)  argue a bit with the first two choices. But Mick Cronin?! Are you freaking kidding me, Dickie V? First of all, Dickie V explains away what I maintain is the number one reason to yCronin is undeserving of such an award. In regards to the Cincinnati/Xavier fight he says:

Cronin made sure his team learned from it. He took charge right away after the game, saying how disgraceful it was and that actions like that would not be tolerated. Cronin talked about putting on the Cincinnati uniform being a privilege and the athletes involved would not be back unless they really gained from the experience.

Is there any local news agency reporting about Bob Huggins drunken public appearance? Or are we just going to keep pretending like his is a harmless affectation unworthy of further investigation?

UPDATE: Way more here. From a national sportsblog. Rather than a location publication. Make of that what you will. 

I’m still not entirely certain that I’ve seen any local coverage anywhere of the apparent fact that Bob Huggins was embarrassingly drunk at a coach’s clinic the other day. I’d ask “What gives?” in an indignant sort of way, except that I know “What gives?” doesn’t get the job done in this case. Instead, the point ought to be asking the local media why a story like this one is unworthy of its time and attention.

The answer? Because we don’t do that around here. We don’t tell the truth around here. We don’t investigate our own. We don’t report on things that might embarrass our heroes. Our loyalty to our local heroes is one of the reason that they’re so frequently allowed to get away with so much. 

In Huggins case, it remains an open secret around Morgantown that the man has a serious drinking problem, one which he has made little effort to seriously address, save for having handlers who take his keys away from him whenever he’s drinking heavily. This isn’t something I’m creating out of whole cloth. He’s been spotted at various local establishments, hammered beyond all recognition. But because he hasn’t revisited the horrible DUI charge that he incurred at Cincinnati - the charge that eventually led him home to Morgantown - the assumption has apparently been that the issue isn’t worth addressing.

I’d disagree but it wouldn’t matter.

Still, you’d think that if the man’s mysterious falls didn’t get the local community’s attention, his appearing before children in an apparently compromised state might. How do you solve that? You make it go away, in this case by simply refusing to deal with the issue. It wouldn’t be the first time that the media around here has been complicit in covering up the misdeeds of a local legend. Local politicians get away with murder. Local personalities do too. 

Still though, one wonders what one of these characters would have to do get the media to pay attention. If getting drunk before a coaching clinic (a clinic that involved huge names from the college ranks, including Indiania’s disgraced Bob Knight, Florida’s Billy Donovan, and North Carolina’s Roy Williams) in the middle of the afternoon isn’t enough of a warning sign, what would be? Actually getting arrested? Something worse? 

Yet nothing. I’d accuse the local media of abandoning their responsibility, but that would wrong assume the local media ever understood its responsibility in the first place. 

(Update:To be fair, here is something from Mike Casazza:

OK, if you were waiting for some sort of comment, here goes because this is the only one I’m going to pull to address The Matter: Believe me, I’m on it. What it is, or was, I don’t yet know. I have pretty solid information. I’ve talked to a number of people who were there and people who are invested. It is not being ignored. Not by me and not by the sort of people you’d hope were not ignoring it. And understand this isn’t new territory for WVU. Delicate topic that has to be  handled carefully, as opposed to fluidly. Just as hard to prove guilt as it is to prove innocence.

I trust nobody more than Casazza, but what are we meant to take from that? The University is investigating quietly and out of the public eye? That doesn’t send the right message on this, because it reeks of coverup, not of a desire to show sunshine on the truth.)

Anybody got anything else?

A person whom I consider smart told me yesterday that the issue with the allegations made against Bob Huggins is that there isn’t enough evidence. The tweets documented here aren’t enough. In other words, unless somebody’s got incriminating audio or video, Huggins for the third time in his WVU career will get away with what seems like a recurrence of his (potentially serious) drinking problem. 

It is remarkable the amount of evidence it takes for an institution to intervene with…well…an institution like Huggins. You’d think multiple people making the same accusation in a very public forum like Twitter would at least be worth following up on (or at least reporting on, as the local media has essentially refused to do), but instead, the standard seems to be that only those whose malfeasance is captured in very specific ways will receive attention. 

So be it.

But what happens when Huggins handlers don’t keep him off of a recording device? What happens when he gets behind the wheel (again)? What happens when the behavior that’s been skillfully hidden from the public suddenly isn’t, and the excuses about why the topic can’t be covered suddenly aren’t good enough anymore?

As another poster here pointed out to me in a private conversation, maybe we end up with Eddie Sutton.