No. 11 West Virginia adds North Texas to schedule in what was a hectic replacement process

MORGANTOWN, W. Va. — Bob Huggins’ name flashed across Josh Eilert’s cell phone late Tuesday night, late enough for Eilert to know the call did not signify good news.

“I knew something had happened,” said Eilert, who is in charge of men’s hoops scheduling as the team’s Director of Operations.

Robert Morris had just pulled out of a scheduled game the next day with the No. 11 Mountaineers (4-1), due to COVID-19 protocols inside the Colonials’ program.

By Thursday morning, WVU announced it had replaced Robert Morris with North Texas (1-2), which will travel to the WVU Coliseum at 3 p.m. Friday.

Roughly 36 hours separated the cancellation news from the rescheduling announcement.

In between?

“I had about 50 schools I contacted,” Eilert said. “There are just so many moving parts in all of this in terms of logistics and timing.

“I was up late until about two o’clock in the morning shooting out emails and leaving voice mails. I hate calling people late at night, but everybody in my position across the country are in the same boat.”

By Wednesday morning, schools were getting back to Eilert and WVU head coach Bob Huggins, but in today’s sports world under a pandemic, Eilert said it takes more that just mutual interest to schedule a game.

“Someone could show some interest, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they are going to call you back,” Eilert said. “If it doesn’t make sense for them or their athletic director isn’t on board or if their state has certain (COVID-19) guidelines; a lot of things have to align for it to happen.

“A lot of people forget about the testing, too. We have certain testing guidelines in the Big 12, so replacing a game on short notice, it has to work with testing as well.”

There are other behind-the-scenes factors, Huggins explained.

A certain team may show interest, “and then they’ll say that they’ll get back to you in a few hours and then you never hear from them again,” Huggins said. “That’s the part that bothers me. They’ll say we’ll get back to you in an hour and then you hear from them three days later.

“Well, you know what’s going on. They’ve been calling everyone else saying, ‘Hey, West Virginia said they would do this for us, what will you do?’ All of a sudden you get caught, I’m not sure a bidding war is the right thing to say, but that’s basically what it is.”

North Texas, which won Conference USA last season and finished 20-11 overall, had a previous game scheduled against Texas A&M Commerce on Dec. 1 canceled and the Mean Green’s Director of Operations, Nelson Haggerty, was a former standout at Baylor.

“I have a relationship with (Haggerty) and he reached out to me,” Eilert said. “We had several offers out on the table, but a lot of people were waiting on their administration or whatever. He reached out to me and said they were open to playing right away.”

North Texas has already traveled to Arkansas and Mississippi State this season, losing both games.

The Mean Green return three starters and their top player off the bench from last season.

Senior forward Zach Simmons averages 12.3 points and 8.7 rebounds to lead the way. He had 11 points and 12 rebounds in the loss to Mississippi State last week.

Replacing the game in a hurry was a necessity, Huggins said, because the WVU coach wants his players to have the opportunity to play a full schedule of 27 games in the regular season.

“We owe it to the kids,” Huggins said. “In my mind, we owe it to the fans, as well, but we owe it to the kids for sure.”

TWEET @bigjax3211