MORGANTOWN — No one man rules without his detractors, and if Bob Huggins is thought of as a favorite son of Cincinnati, it does not come without a fair share of critics.
For the most part, those critics are called Xavier fans, and they will dive into the Cintas Center on Saturday ready to welcome back the man they loved to hate for 16 years.
“They will call names out, yes,” Huggins admits.
Huggins arrived on the University of Cincinnati campus in 1989, just a few months after the Bengals had just made it to the Super Bowl.
The Ickey Shuffle was the craze of the city then, named after budding star running back Ickey Woods.
Less than a year later, the Reds were World Series Champions led by future Hall-of-Famer Barry Larkin and an intimidating group of relief pitchers known as the Nasty Boys.
The city’s former mayor was now a talk show host and gaining national attention. You may have heard of him … Jerry Springer.
In between it all was Huggins, a young man rebuilding the Bearcats into a national contender, which he accomplished in his third year in taking Cincinnati to the Final Four.
Over those 16 years, Huggins won 399 games, 10 conference titles and took Cincinnati to 14 consecutive NCAA tournaments.
It all came at the expense of the little private Catholic school across town, Xavier, and when the two schools got together in the 1990s, it wasn’t unusual to see more than just basketballs flying around the gymnasium.
“It’s quite a rivalry,” Huggins said. “I think more so on their side than UC’s side.”
For a while, the dislike carried over between Huggins and former Xavier coach Pete Gillen.
In 1994, TV cameras showed Huggins refusing to shake Gillen’s hand after Xavier won in overtime.
“Pete and I didn’t get along very well,” Huggins said. “Then that all changed. Pete and I got along very well after that. We got to be good friends.”
If the spirit of the rivalry was felt between the coaches, it also carried over to the fan bases and the city itself.
If you think the WVU-Pitt rivalry is fueled by hatred, there is at least a state line that divides the two. Not so for Cincinnati-Xavier, whose campuses are located just four miles apart.
“I don’t have any good thoughts of Xavier whatsoever,” Huggins said. “None. Absolutely none.”
There are no boundaries in the city, something that was made clear on the air waves controlled by 700 WLW, a news/talk radio station that only helped to fuel the rivalry.
“You could call any of those guys at WLW,” Huggins said. “You talk about loudmouths, now. Call (Bill) Cunningham. He’s a big Xavier guy. He’ll give you the scoop, which would be a lie probably, but it’ll be a good story.”
Whether or not this trip back to Cincinnati — Huggins’ third since becoming WVU’s coach in 2007 — is a good story will depend on the outcome, combative or not.
“I was never combative,” Huggins says in a wink-wink manner. “Let me tell you something, if the same things were happening to you, you’d be much more combative than I was. How’s that?”
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