Bob Huggins

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Bob Huggins (born September 21, 1953 in Morgantown, West Virginia[1]) is the head coach of the men's basketball team at Kansas State University, and was head coach at University of Cincinnati from 1989 to 2005. His 567-199 record (.740) during his 24 seasons as a head coach ranks him eighth in winning percentage and 11th in victories among active Division I coaches. His string of 14 consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances is the third-longest active streak. His teams have won 20 or more games in all but four of his 24 campaigns and he has averaged 23.5 victories a season; 26.0 wins per campaign over the past nine years.

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[edit] Playing career

Huggins, who had moved to Gnadenhutten, Ohio with his family, played basketball for his father, Charles, at Indian Valley South High School. As a senior, he helped lead his team to a 26-0 season.[2] Huggins returned to his native West Virginia, playing point guard for the West Virginia University Mountaineers from 1975 until 1977.[3] Cut after a 1977 tryout with the Philadelphia 76ers, Huggins subsequently pursued a master's degree and sold sneakers.[4]

[edit] Start of coaching career

Huggins launched his coaching career as a graduate assistant on Joedy Gardner's staff at West Virginia University in 1977. He then spent two years as an assistant to Eldon Miller at Ohio State University. Huggins was only 27 when he became a collegiate head coach, accepting the position at Walsh University in 1980. In three seasons at Walsh, he compiled a 71-26 record, twice earning NAIA District 22 Coach of the Year honors. Huggins directed the 1982-83 team to a perfect 30-0 regular season mark and an eventual 34-1 mark. After serving as an assistant at University of Central Florida for the 1983-84 season, Huggins was named head coach at the University of Akron where he compiled a 97-46 record and reached post-season play in three of his five seasons there.

[edit] Career at University of Cincinnati

Huggins compiled a 399-127 record (.759) in his 16 years at Cincinnati, making him the winningest coach in terms of victories and percentage in the school's rich basketball history. Huggins directed Cincinnati to ten conference regular-season titles and eight league tournament titles. The Bearcats appeared in post-season play in each of Huggins' 16 seasons at U.C., advancing to the Elite Eight of the NCAA tournament two times and, in 1991-92, appearing once in the Final Four.

Huggins earned the Ray Meyer Award as the Conference USA Coach of the Year a record three times (1997-98, 1998-99, and 1999-2000), and was a unanimous choice for C-USA Coach of the Decade. He was selected national coach of the year by ESPN.com in 2001-02. He was named co-national coach of the year by The Sporting News last season and was Basketball Times' national coach of the year in 1997-98. He earned national coach of the year recognition from Hoop Scoop in 1991-92 and Playboy in 1992-93. During this time the program also gained a reputation for a rough style of play and academic under-performance, as well as numerous criminal convictions and arrests for many of his players, thus comparing Huggins to Jerry Tarkanian's successful, yet controversial, UNLV programs. Huggins' program was put on NCAA probation for lack of institutional control in 1998. Huggins was suspended indefinitely following a drunken-driving charge before resigning in 2005.

Huggins is a proven success as a program-builder, recruiter, game strategist, and inspirational leader, and he is believed by fans to have demonstrated this in varying situations during his tenure at Cincinnati. He also has directed star-studded teams, while developing the individual talents of players such as consensus All-Americans Danny Fortson, Kenyon Martin, and Steve Logan, to a succession of conference championships and NCAA tournament runs. Huggins has achieved similar success on the recruiting trails. He has attracted three No. 1-rated junior college players and five McDonald's All-Americans, while six of his last nine recruiting classes have been ranked among the nation's top ten. Inheriting a team short on numbers upon his arrival at Cincinnati, Huggins coached that 1989-90 squad to a post-season tournament berth. Two seasons later, he assimilated the talents of four junior-college transfers and a smattering of seasoned veterans into a cohesive unit, which he directed to successive finishes in the Final Four and the Elite Eight. However, Huggins had mixed tournament success after those seasons. He led the Bearcats to the Elite Eight in 1996 and the Sweet 16 in 2001, but in all other tournaments, his teams were bounced in the second round, frequently losing to much lower seeds. Some have pointed out that his 1992 trip to the Final Four was facilitated by a busted bracket; the top three seeds in the bracket all lost in the second round, and all of the teams the fourth-seeded Bearcats beat were seeded lower than they were.

Over the ensuing seasons, he developed young and inexperienced teams with as many as three freshmen starters into squads which captured two more league titles and made another pair of NCAA appearances. Huggins surprised some astute college basketball followers in 1997-98 by directing a team which had only one returning starter to a 27-6 record, conference regular season, and tournament titles, a No. 2 seed in the NCAA tournament and a Top-10 finish in the polls. The team was then upset by West Virginia in the tournament. Huggins' 2001-02 team, unranked when the season began, posted a 31-4 record, setting a U.C. mark for victories, made a clean sweep of the Conference USA regular season and tournament titles, and was a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament, where they lost in double overtime to No 8 seed UCLA. In 2002-03, Huggins suffered a major heart attack on the last Saturday of September, but was present for the team's first practice two weeks later and coached the Bearcats with the same intensity that has become his trademark. Not surprisingly given the season's rocky start, the team qualified for the NCAA tournament only as an 8 seed, and were ousted in the first round by Gonzaga.

The 2003-04 season was business as usual for Huggins, who piloted U.C. to C-USA regular-season and tournament titles, and an NCAA tournament berth while amassing a 25-7 record. Despite a favorable draw -- the team was sent to nearby Columbus, OH, for the first two rounds of the tournament -- the Bearcats were mauled by the University of Illinois, losing by 24 points in the second round. The 2004-05 Bearcats posted a 25-8 ledger, the ninth season in the past ten years that U.C. has won 25 or more games. They received only a 7 seed in the tournament, however, and gave eventual Elite Eight participant Kentucky a spirited game before falling in the second round.

[edit] Resignation

In August 2005, the University of Cincinnati bought out the final three years of his contract in exchange for his resignation. In an interview on ESPN, Huggins admitted that his 2004 arrest for driving under the influence created the perception that he was not a proper representative for the University.[5]

[edit] Career at Kansas State; recruiting

After spending a year out of the coaching profession, on March 23, 2006, Huggins accepted the head coaching job at Kansas State University [6], replacing the fired Jim Wooldridge and creating an immediate buzz in the state of Kansas, the Big 12, and the nation. Since taking the KSU job, Huggins has generally improved basketball recruiting at the school. His initial recruiting class featured 7-foot-3, 265-pound center from Jacksonville, Florida, Jason Bennett. Bennett was a consensus top-50 player for the 2006 recruiting class.[7] The class also featured Blake Young, a 6-foot-2, 180-pound shooting guard, and Luis Colon, a 6-foot-10, 260-pound center/power forward. Finally, on October 25, 2006, the Kansas City Star reported that Bill Walker, a highly touted recruit for the 2007 class, had enrolled at Kansas State after completing his entrance requirements a year early, and would join the 2006 class.[8] Walker is eligible to play in K-State's home game against Kennesaw State on December 17, 2006.

On June 23, 2006, Huggins landed a commitment for the 2007 season from perhaps the biggest recruit in K-State's history in 6'8" small forward Michael Beasley. Beasley is ranked by many services as one of the top prospects for 2007.[9]

Huggins' arrival at K-State has created an excitement for basketball among Wildcat fans not seen since the late 1980s. Season-ticket sales at Bramlage Coliseum have reached record levels in this first season alone.

[edit] Assistant coaches at Kansas State

Huggins' first staff of assistant coaches at Kansas State includes Frank Martin, Dalonte Hill, Erik Martin and Brad Underwood (as director of basketball operations).

Frank Martin joined the staff after spending the previous two seasons as an assistant coach at Cincinnati, first for Bob Huggins in 2004-2005 and then for Andy Kennedy in 2005-2006. He helped guide the Bearcats to a 46-21 (.686) overall record and back-to-back postseason appearances from 2004-2006.

Dalonte Hill joined the staff after spending the previous three seasons as an assistant coach at his alma mater, the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, under Bobby Lutz. In that position, he helped guide the 49ers to a 61-30 (.760) overall record and three consecutive postseason appearances from 2003-2006. Some commentators have said that Michael Beasley committed to K-State because of a tight link with Hill. [10] Hill was Beasley's AAU coach.

Brad Underwood is a native Kansan and former Kansas State University letterman.

[edit] Notable players

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://www.enquirer.com/bearcats/2002/03/23/uc_sullivan_huggins_2.html
  2. ^ http://www.enquirer.com/bearcats/2002/02/24/uc_huggins_achieved.html
  3. ^ http://www.msnsportsnet.com/page.cfm?section=4936
  4. ^ http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/sports/colleges/kansas_state_university/14164102.htm
  5. ^ "Huggins: DUI Sealed Fate,", Cincinnati Post, Dec. 2, 2005
  6. ^ "Huggins accepts Kansas State job", ESPN.com, Andy Katz, March 23, 2006.
  7. ^ http://kansasstate.rivals.com/viewrank.asp?SID=889&Year=2006&ra_key=1428
  8. ^ http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/sports/15845595.htm
  9. ^ http://kansasstate.rivals.com/viewrank.asp?SID=889&Year=2007&ra_key=1611
  10. ^ [1], www.Rivals.com, March 28, 2006
Preceded by
Jim Wooldridge		 Kansas State Basketball Coach
2006–Present		 Succeeded by
Current Coach
Preceded by
Tony Yates		 Cincinnati Basketball Coach[2]
1989–2005		 Succeeded by
Mick Cronin
Kansas State Wildcats Head Basketball Coaches
Melick • Ahearn • Lowman • Merner • Clevenger • Knoth • Curtis • Corsaut • Root • Gardner (pre-war) • Cochrane • Rock • Knorr • Gardner (post-war) • Winter • Fitzsimmons • Hartman • Kruger • Altman • Asbury• Wooldridge • Huggins
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