1928 - Alderson High School - 1968

 

WVU Coach Bobby Huggins Radio Interview
Alex McLaughlin - March 29, 2010

A written transcript of what Coach Bobby Huggins reported on radio that he told  his WVU basketball team after they lost to the University of Connecticut on February 22, 2010. Since then they have won ten straight games including  the Big East Championship, four games in the NCAA tournament and will be playing in the Final Four this weekend for the first time since 1959.

“ All I just told them in there was I don’t know that they have any idea how much they mean to this state, and how much this state rallies around them. I told them this, ‘You have very few times in your life to be special. Very, very few. A lot of people never have a chance to be special.’ This group, maybe could have, should have, whatever. If we close a couple games out, we’re probably top five in the country. Very few people have that opportunity to be special -- particularly at a place like West Virginia, where they’ve had great basketball, but they’re not the Steelers. Cincinnati had great basketball when I was there, but they’re not the Reds.”

"Mountaineer basketball and football are West Virginia’s pride. I told them we -- not them, we -- had a chance to be special, and bring this state so much pride and joy. Jay has said this conceivably could be the best team since the Final Four team, and what that means to this state."

I had the best team in the country. It wasn’t even close. We had the best player in the country. I told them, he came in my office in the spring and said, ‘Huggs, what should I do?’ I said, ‘I don’t know, man. Let me find out.’ I found out he was going to go between 18 and 21 in the draft. I call him in and ask him, ‘Before I get into this deal, what do you want to do?’ He looked at me and said, ‘I want to win the national championship.’ He said, ‘Coach, we talk about being special here. I want to win a national championship.’ He got a tear, coming down his face. I said, ‘I think you answered your own question.’ I told them, when he broke his leg, and I’m out on the floor hugging him and he’s crying on my shoulder, he never said one word about, ‘Oh, there goes my pro career. Look at the money I might have lost.’ You know what he said? ‘Man, I’m not going to be able to win the national championship. Why? Why Huggs? Why did this happen to me? I just wanted to win the national championship and be special.’ He’s crying on my shoulder, and there’s a guy that’s the No. 1 pick in the draft, and maybe could have been done. Single-mindedness, focus, and purpose. That’s what he wanted to do."

"I told them in there, ‘Man, you guys have no idea.' When you get older, you think, ‘I wish I would have listened.’ We all do. But this might not happen again. I’m going to be honest and I’m going to vent a bit maybe here -- there’s 600 students at the Seton Hall game. They may never have another top 10 team. It might not ever happen again. Everybody assumes. When I was at Cincinnati, everybody assumed we were just going to be what we were year after year after year. It’s hard. It’s hard. These guys being part of this -- everybody thinks how bad they want to go to the NBA. That ain’t fun. Everybody in the NBA will tell you the greatest experience they had was playing in college. Everybody. It’s fun. I told them, ‘I’m usually pretty irate when we lose, because I detest losing. I mean, I detest it. But I’m hurt.' I’m hurt, because I know what this means to the people in our state -- being able to pump their chest out and say, ‘That’s my team.’"

"It’s not over with. We certainly can’t let it be over with. But, you know, we’re playing triangle-and-two, and we get back-cut twice for lay-ups. There’s supposed to be a guy standing on the block. Standing there. How do you get back-cut for a lay-up? How is there not somebody standing there to catch the guy coming to the basket? Those kind of things, to me, are inexcusable and incredibly frustrating. Because I think I do understand. I came back here for a reason. I came back for no other reason than I love this University, I love this state and I love the people here. If we can do something special for them, that’s what I want to do. And we’re going to. We’re going to. But it takes a piece of you."