EARLY DAYS: Darris Nichols’ visit to Coliseum sparks Bob Huggins discussion about his coaching beginnings

MORGANTOWN — It was more of a study-hall atmosphere than a raucous college basketball game.

At least that’s how Bob Huggins remembers his first days as a college basketball coach at Walsh College in 1980.

“I’m not kidding, there were eight or nine people in the stands my first game,” Huggins said. “I think three or four of them were from the Brotherhood of Christian Instruction. They sat there and read a book the first half. That’s the gospel truth. They sat there and read a book and left at halftime.”

Those were the earliest of early days for Huggins, a time when he began to build what is sure to be one day a Hall-of-Fame coaching career filled with 906 wins and two trips to a Final Four.

WVU STATS

Times were different then. Revenue was built through ticket sales and not TV contracts, and so Huggins did things like promising to paint a farmer’s barn and then basically turned that barn into a Walsh billboard to drum up interest in his program.

Or, during his days at Akron, borrowing a huge wooden cow from a local dairy to set up in front of the basketball arena to use as advertising in order to sell that dairy some tickets to Zips home games.

“Those just aren’t stories,” Huggins assures. “Those were reality.”

And so the veteran coach just sort of smiles when asked to compare that beginning to the one former WVU standout Darris Nichols is undertaking at Radford.

“I’d have been the most excited guy if I could have started at Radford instead of Walsh,” Huggins said. “Darris doesn’t have to do those things.”

Nichols makes his return to the WVU Coliseum at 4 p.m. Saturday, as the head coach of the Highlanders (4-4).

In doing so, he becomes just the second WVU alum to come back to Morgantown to coach against the Mountaineers (6-1), with the first being Fred Schaus in 1975, as Purdue’s head coach.

Nichols’ debut as a head coach comes 41 years after Huggins’ days at Walsh.

And in those years, it’s been more than the rules that have changed the game.

It’s become a billion-dollar business now, the game of college athletics, to the point where teams flip-flop conferences without barely a second thought and players run in and out of the transfer portal seeking the school that will give them more exposure or playing time.

College athletes can officially hire agents now and can make more in endorsements than their coaches, who are already earning multi million-dollar salaries.

Those salaries bring an enormous amount of expectations with them, leaving coaches less of a grace period to build a program.

This is the environment Nichols — as a first-year head coach — must navigate through, as he build his own coaching resume.

Huggins is asked, under the current atmosphere around college athletics, if he would still consider coaching if he was just starting out today?

“No, no I wouldn’t,” he replied. “I think it’s more about the relationships than the other stuff. We have so many people making decisions for us that don’t know a damn thing about what we do.

“They don’t know anything about the culture. They don’t know anything about why those of us that are where we are got to where we are. They don’t have a clue.”

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