MORGANTOWN — Don’t be surprised if Bob Huggins doesn’t appear to be his usual effervescent self Saturday when he’s in the TV studio for the NCAA tournament.
“No, not nervous,” the West Virginia men’s hoops coach said Thursday. “but I’m battling a cold.”
In truth, Huggins is battling so much more these days, as he tries to rebuild his program in the days following the announcement that both Jalen Bridges and Isaiah Cottrell have entered the transfer portal.
“We’re going to win,” is the way Huggins begins the conversation. “Anyone who doesn’t believe we’re not going to win and get this thing fixed is sadly mistaken.”
There is conviction in his voice as he says that, conviction that breaks out through the yucks and the mucks that comes with being under the weather.
But there is an underlying story with what’s going on with the WVU program, and to be fair, the Mountaineers are in the same boat with about 300 other Division I basketball schools.
“This all began with the NCAA,” Huggins said. “There’s always been transferring, as far back as anyone wants to talk about, there’s been transferring.
“It was regulated before. It was harder to transfer (because athletes had to sit out a season after transferring). Once (the NCAA) opened the door to immediate eligibility, that just changed everything.”
It’s changed everything in terms of recruiting, as well as maintaining your own roster.
Since first-time transfers are now granted immediate eligibility without sitting out a season, well, Huggins once joked that teams would be recruiting other players in the handshake lines after games, and he’s not far off.
That’s the era of college athletics we are now entrenched in, filled with transfers and money, money and more money from Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) deals.
It truly doesn’t take much to make a kid think the grass is greener on the other side.
You find a kid who was highly respected in the recruiting ranks, but maybe struggled to meet those expectations early in his college career.
You get a guy in that kid’s ear and say, “Hey, it’s not exactly working out here, and my school can offer you even more money from NIL.”
That kid is generally in the transfer portal the next day.
“I guess it’s the times,” Huggins said.
And this is where we get into the meat of the conversation and Huggins does not shy away from the idea that college athletics has now become Major League Baseball, in that you have big-money teams and small-money teams.
Take a small-money team like the Pittsburgh Pirates. Once the Pirates develop a young kid into a budding star, he then bolts for the New York Yankees, because Pittsburgh can’t afford to pay him.
Throw that scenario into WVU’s basketball roster for next season.
Let’s say, hypothetically, someone like Kobe Johnson, James Okonkwo or Seth Wilson begin to flash some real potential next season.
All three guys are still young with a ton of eligibility remaining, and all three could begin to hear some talk about better options and more money at another school.
“Could that happen?” Huggins said. “It could very well happen. The difficult part is there’s really no way to keep that from happening.”
Baseball teams like the Pirates, it is joked, are nothing more than an extra farm system for teams like the Yankees, Boston Red Sox or L.A. Dodgers.
Huggins used the exact term “farm system” in explaining where college athletics are heading.
“It could very much turn into a farm system,” he said. “Guys are much more transient than ever before and you’re seeing guys coming and going in the portal.”
Huggins’ thoughts on the matter do not cover only his own program. He talked about how even smaller schools, such as Mid-American schools and the likes will fall even further from the idea of there being a level playing field in college athletics.
It is a thought that paints a difficult picture for the future. As for WVU’s future, Huggins said he believes senior guard Sean McNeil will take another look at the NBA this summer before making his decision on whether or not to come back.
As for Bridges and Cottrell transferring, Huggins was mixed on just how much that will have an impact on the program.
“We’ve been through this before. We’ll be fine,” he said.
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