Okay, so I’ve been tracking Bob Huggins for a long time. It sort of became a thing I did, like a personal project I kept tabs on over the years.
My Bob Huggins Watch
I remember first really noticing him way back when he was coaching Cincinnati. Man, those teams were something else. Tough as nails, played super hard defense. Wasn’t always the prettiest basketball to watch, you know? But they won a ton of games, and they definitely had an identity. I kinda respected that grind.
So, I started following his career more closely after that. Just became a habit, really. When he bounced to Kansas State for that short stint, I kept an eye on things. Then, obviously, when he landed back at West Virginia, his old school, it felt like a major homecoming. Seemed like the perfect spot for him. And for many years, it really seemed to work out that way.
What I mostly paid attention to:
- How his teams defended. That matchup zone thing he did, and later that intense full-court press they called ‘Press Virginia’. Always interesting to see the tactics.
- Watching how he managed to get players, often guys who weren’t the absolute top recruits, to buy into his system and just play incredibly hard.
- Just the sheer consistency year after year. You pretty much knew what you were going to get when you watched a Huggins team. Grit, toughness, defense.
It became a regular part of my college basketball watching. Every season, you’d check in on WVU, see how Huggins’ squad was looking. He got them to the Final Four that one time, had a bunch of tournament runs. He felt like a permanent fixture, a known quantity in the college game.
Then Things Took a Turn
And then, well, things went south pretty fast recently. It all seemed to unravel quickly. First, there were those awful comments he made on that radio show. That was just bad. Really bad. Didn’t sit right with me, made me look at things a bit differently.
Not long after that came the DUI charge. That seemed to be the point of no return, I suppose. It wasn’t just a single slip-up; reading about it, it felt like maybe part of something bigger? Hard to know for sure just watching from afar. But seeing him exit West Virginia like that, under those circumstances, after being there for so long… it felt abrupt and messy.
Honestly, trying to make sense of it all has been strange. Yeah, he’s just a basketball coach, why care so much? But when you follow someone’s public career for decades, you sort of build up this picture in your head. Seeing that picture crumble like that is… well, it’s disappointing. It definitely complicates how you remember the whole run.
I spent some time just thinking it over, trying to square the coach I watched for years with these recent events. Does the bad stuff cancel out the good? Does it change how you view all those wins and tough teams? I don’t really have solid answers. It’s just complicated. Made me think that this whole ‘practice’ of mine, just watching and observing someone’s career, shows you everything – the highs, the lows, and sometimes an ending you totally didn’t see coming.
It kinda reminded me of this situation I had at an old job. We worked on this project for ages, put in crazy hours, thought it was going to be the next big thing. Then, out of nowhere, some leadership changes, budget cuts… boom. Project cancelled. Just like that. All that work, gone in an instant. Felt a bit like watching Huggins’ career end at WVU. You’re just left standing there, thinking, ‘Wow, okay. That happened.’ You just move on, I guess. But you don’t forget how it went down.
