Bob Huggins

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Bob Huggins (born September 21, 1953 in Morgantown, West Virginia^[1]) is the 21st 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 590-211 record (.737) during his 25 seasons as a head coach ranks him eighth in winning percentage and seventh in victories among active Division I coaches. Huggins has been to 15 total NCAA tournaments, including 14 of the last 15 seasons. Huggins has averaged 23.6 wins per season, including 25.6 his last 15 years.

Contents 1 Playing career 2 Start of coaching career 3 Career at University of Cincinnati 4 Resignation 5 Career at Kansas State 5.1 Immediate buzz at Kansas State 5.2 Recruiting at Kansas State 5.3 2006-2007 season 6 Notable players 7 References

[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.

[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 including an NCAA bid during the 1985-1986 season. That bid would be the one and only time the Zips have reached the NCAA tournament to this day.

[edit] Career at University of Cincinnati

Cincinnati, while having a rich history had fallen under hard times. The once proud program that had been to 5 consecutive final four's from 1959-1963 including a pair of national championships in 61 and 62 had not been to the NCAA tournament since 1976 when Huggins arrived in 1989. After being relugated to the NIT his first two years, Huggins would take the Bearcats to the final four in his third season which would be the start of a 14 year run of NCAA tournament appearances.

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 three 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, after numerous black eyes on the university- including a player tying his roomate to a chair and lighting him on fire and numerous other criminal acts- 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.^[4]

[edit] Career at Kansas State

After spending a year out of the coaching profession, on March 23, 2006, Huggins accepted the head coaching job at Kansas State University ^[5], replacing the fired Jim Wooldridge. Similar to Cincinnati before Huggins arived, Kansas State while having a rich basketball tradition that includes four finals fours, had fallen on hard times. The Wildcats had not been to the NCAA tournament since the 1996-1997 and had not had a conference record better than 7-9 since the Big 12 was formed in the 1996. The previous three Kansas State basketball coaches (Dana Altman, Tom Asbury, Jim Wooldridge) had combined for a 236-232 record, while in that same period Huggins had gone a remarkable 379-113 at Cincinnati.

[edit] Immediate buzz at Kansas State

From his introductory press conference,^[6] Huggins got the momentum in Manhattan rolling with a quote of "Why settle for 2nd when 1st is available?" For the first time in the 13,340 seat Bramlage Coliseum history, all season ticket packages were sold out as season ticket sales went from 6,500 in 2005-2006 to 13,000 for Huggins' inaugural year at Kansas State. While some looked down upon the Huggins hiring after the way he was ousted from Cincinnati, the majority of the college basketball world thought it was a great hire for both Huggins and Kansas State. ^[7]

[edit] Recruiting at Kansas State

While many believe Kansas State to be a difficult place to recruit to because of it's rural location, Huggins has shown little sign of recruiting difficulty. Huggins molded his staff as Kansas State to help with his first two classes at Kansas State, and used his year off of college basketball to recruit some of the best prep players in America. ^[8] Before arriving at Kansas State, many had knowledge that Huggins could posssibly bring some of the top college basketball prep stars with him to any school that would hire him. ^[9] Some names included consensus top 10 players in OJ Mayo and Bill Walker along with other consensus top 100 recruits such as Herb Pope, Ramar Smith and Jason Bennett. While Mayo, Pope and Smith all ended up landing at other schools, Huggins was able to bring along Bennett for the 2006-2007 season and Walker that while initially was slated to join the team for the 2007-2008 season, managed to graduate from North College Hill High School early to participate in time for the 2nd semester at Kansas State. Huggins built his assistant coaching staff with recruiting in mind. He Hired Brad Underwood, a 1986 Kansas State graduate as Director of Basketball Operations. Underwoods hiring was essential in Landing 4-star ^[10] shooting guard Blake Young as he was Young's coach at Daytona Beach Community College. Assistant coach Frank Martin was the first assistant coach Huggins hired when he arrived at Kansas State. Martin, a Florida International graduate, and assistant under Huggins when he was at Cincinnati, has played a key part in Landing top recruits in state of Florida. Luis Colon, a 6-10 forward out of Miami, Flordia was lured to Kansas State largely on the recruiting efforts of Frank Martin. All and all, Huggins first recruiting class at Kansas State included Bennett, Colon, Young and 5th year senior from St. Johns University, Jermaine Maybank who took advantage of a now-defunct NCAA rule that allowed graduating seniors with eligibilty still remaining to transfer to another school with no penalty.

Huggins 2nd recruiting class was even more spectacular. The hiring of former UNC-Charlotte graduate Dalonte Hill was a key component to landing consensus top 5 player ^[11]Michael Beasley out of the Washington D.C area. Beasley, a formed UNC-Charlotte commit where Hill coached before Huggins hired him, switched his college choice to Kansas St soon after Hill was hired by Bob Huggins. Other recruits in the 2007 recruiting class include Walker, Dominique Sutton, a 6-4 swingman out of Durham North Carolina, Jacob Pullen, a 6-1 point guard from Proviso East High School and Fred Brown, a 6-2 shooting guard from West Palm Beach Florida. The 2007 class was so strong, both recruiting services from rivals.com and scout.com have rated it the best in the country. ^{[12] [13]}

[edit] 2006-2007 season

Huggins first season at Kansas State was viewed with cautious optimism from the media and fans. Kansas State had returned 4 of their top 5 scorers including 2nd team All Big 12 member Cartier Martin and Honorable All-Big 12 member David Hoskins. The 2005-2006 team had been involved in many close games going 7-9 in games decided by 5 points or less during the season. The Wildcats were picked as high as 5th to finish in the Big 12, ^[14] which showed the confidence Huggins coaching peers had in his coaching abilities as Kansas State had never finished higher than 7th place in Big 12 basketball history. The early part of the season got off to a rocky start as the Wildcats started the year 4-3 which included embarrassing losses to the New Mexico Lobos and ppCalifornia Golden Bears]] by a combined 54 points. The Wildcats would benefit from the eligibility of Bill Walker and run off six straight wins including a tournament victory in the Las Vegas Holiday Classic. The Wildcats would soon hit another rough patch as they lost three straight games to Xavier, Texas A&M and Texas Tech. Even more damaging was the loss of star freshmen Bill Walker who was averaging 13.1 points per game before tearing his ACL five minutes into a 69-65 loss to Texas A&M. After the Walker injury the Wildcats seniors Martin, Lance Harris, and Akeem Wright stepped up their game and led Kansas State to a 7 game winning streak which included a win over ranked the ppTexas Longhorns]] in Austin that broke a 22 game Texas home winning streak. The 2nd half of big 12 play saw the Wildcats go 4-4 including a pair of losses its arch-rival the Kansas Jayhawks which brought a total of 24 straight wins by Kansas in the Wildcats home arena. Kansas State ended the Big 12 season in the semifinals of the Big 12 tournament losing to Kansas for a 3rd time, but did pick up a crucial 66-45 win over Texas Tech which was viewed at the time as a clinching win to make the NCAA tournament. Much to the disappointment to Huggins and Kansas State, the Wildcats were left out of the NCAA tournament for the 11th consecutive year which makes that streak 4th longest among BCS conference schools. Kansas State felt particularly snubbed due to the fact it was the first big 12 team not to make the NCAA tournament despite posting a 10-6 record, finishing in fourth place and reaching the semifinals of the big 12 tournament. The Wildcats settled on a NIT bid and went 1-1 beating Vermont and losing to Depaul. Kansas State ended the season 23-12 (10-6) which was the most victories from a Wildcat team since the 1987-1988 team.

[edit] Notable players

• Kenyon Martin
• Nick Van Exel
• Danny Fortson
• James White
• Eric Hicks
• Ruben Patterson
• Corie Blount
• Jason Maxiell
• Cartier Martin
• Steve Logan

[edit] References

Preceded by Jim Wooldridge	Kansas State Men's Basketball Coach 2006–Present	Succeeded by Current Coach
Preceded by Tony Yates	Cincinnati Men's Basketball Coach 1989–2005	Succeeded by Andy Kennedy (interim coach)