It’s often you hear a head coach, especially one that just lost to West Virginia by 30 points, speak highly of the job Bob Huggins has done at West Virginia.
They speak about how Huggins always gets his players to play hard and with a ton of heart, energy and physicality, almost in a uniform statement that they are reading off a piece of paper.
Except this was Jerrod Calhoun, who as a young college graduate back in the day, got his start in coaching as a grad assistant at Cincinnati under Huggins and then was given his first taste of Division I hoops years later by Huggins at WVU.
This wasn’t just another coach giving the usual coach-speak respect to the man who now has 911 wins after WVU beat Calhoun’s Youngstown State 82-52 on Wednesday.
“He should be in the Hall of Fame and he should have a statue outside the Coliseum,” Calhoun said. “I don’t know what we’re waiting on. We’ve got the Jerry (West) statue, we’ve got the ‘Hot’ Rod (Hundley) statue. Let Huggs enjoy it. Get that statue up. He’s a Hall-of-Famer. He should have a statue here soon. I’m shocked that it’s not out there.”
These just weren’t words of gratitude being spoken by Calhoun, who was part of Huggins’ staff during the run to the 2010 Final Four.
It was clear he had put some thought into what he was saying.
And Calhoun’s point was simple: We rarely truly recognize greatness while it’s right in front of us.
We see the games. We see the wins. We see the runs to the NCAA tournament or players who are developed into NBA talent, but for whatever reason, we never really understand the totality of it all while it’s still going on.
Years from now, once Huggins has hung up his clipboard and WVU has moved on to another coach, it will be easy to make comparisons or take in the entire big picture that Huggins presents for the team and the university.
“It kind of hit me once he became the fourth-winningest coach,” WVU forward Jalen Bridges said. “I mean, we see him every single day. Most of the time, you’re not thinking about that, having a legendary coach like that.”
Which is sort of Calhoun’s point.
“This guy almost has 1,000 wins and he’s not in the Hall of Fame, yet, which bothers a lot of guys,” Calhoun said. “He needs to be in there and have a statue here, because we’re all going to miss him.
“The reality is, how many more years he does this, we all need to enjoy it. How ever many years he has left, we need to embrace it.”
The truth is, we really don’t know how many more seasons Huggins has on the sidelines. He just signed a contract extension this summer that will keep him as head coach for a few more years.
After that? Only Huggins knows for sure if he’s still feeling the same enthusiasm toward coaching and working with college kids to keep working the grind.
And then what? It shouldn’t be this way, but when that day comes that Huggins decides to stop coaching, that’s the day the big picture becomes very clear.
Because it’s very much a possibility the next guy doesn’t keep WVU relevant in the Big 12 or in the national picture. It’s very much a possibility WVU never goes on another three-season streak of being ranked in the AP Top 25 like it did from 2015-18, or make another run at a Final Four.
“He just keeps winning, because they’re relentless,” Calhoun said. “That’s the biggest thing I’ve taken from him, is that you have to be relentless in what you try to do each day.”
In typical Huggins fashion, he simply smiled and played off Calhoun’s statue comments.
“I’m appreciative of those guys. Those guys have been great to me,” Huggins said. “Maybe after you retire, you got nothing else to do but sit around and think about things like that. It is what it is. It’s a nice thing. They probably should do a statue of me, but it should be about three inches tall, so it wouldn’t get in Jerry’s and Rod’s way.”
TWEET @bigjax3211
