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One more celebration to go?... West Virginia’s Da’Sean Butler holds up the regional championship trophy as teammate Joe Mazzulla, left, and head coach Bobby Huggins, right, look on after the Mountaineers’ 73-66 win over Kentucky last Saturday in Syracuse, N.Y. AP photo

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April 2, 2010

Huggins has WVU in Final 4

By BRIAN WOODSON Bluefield Daily Telegraph The Bluefield Daily Telegraph Fri Apr 02, 2010, 05:00 AM EDT

BLUEFIELD — It’s been a while since West Virginia played in the Final Four. In fact, Bob Huggins was 5. He’s now 56.

During a teleconference earlier this week, Huggins recalled where he may have been when the Mountaineers reached the championship game in 1959, falling one point short in a loss to California.

“I can remember sitting on my grandfather’s lap listening to Jack Fleming call games, my grandfather never missed a game on the radio,” Huggins said. “There is certainly thousands and thousands of other people that grew up the same way.”

But only Huggins has taken West Virginia back to the Final Four.

He’s trying to follow up on what his desire was when he took over the WVU program from John Beilein in 2007. Huggins shared those thoughts with the current crop of Mountaineers during recruiting trips, and now has five starters from New York and New Jersey.

“I told them we could be something special, and I told them we’re going to win a national championship,” Huggins said. “That is our goal.”

Huggins knows what it would mean to the avid West Virginia fan base to bring a championship back to Morgantown.

“It would be great. They’d be partying in the streets in every town in the state,” Huggins said. “Unless you are here, you don’t know how important it is. It’s hard to get a grasp on how much it means to the people in this state.”

No one wants it more.

Huggins, a native of Morgantown, played at West Virginia from 1975-77, and is now in his third season as the coach at his alma mater.

Few know the tradition of West Virginia basketball like he does. He goes back “as far back as Jerry West” and has seen the arrival of other stars such as Rod Hundley, Princeton’s own Rod Thorn and Fritz Williams.

“I can go back about as far as Jerry (West), I would have liked to have seen the other guys play, but the tradition here is great,” Huggins said. “All of them are West Virginia guys, all of them are West Virginia natives.

“There is great tradition here, and I think there is great tradition here with coaching this team and you go all the way back to Fred Schaus and go back to Gale Catlett. People here relate very much to the people who played here and people who are from here.”

Huggins is no stranger to success on the hardwood, having led Cincinnati to the Final Four in 1992. Eighteen years later, he is finally back, but don’t ask him to compare one experience to another.

“I don’t know if it is more special (now), but it is more special being able to do it here and being able to do it with this group of guys,” Huggins said.

That closeness is what Huggins likes so much about this team, and it starts with his star — senior guard Da’Sean Butler, who has made six game-winning last season shots in West Virginia wins this season.

“When your best player is arguably your best person and without question your hardest worker, you’re going to be pretty good and we’re pretty fortunate to have Da’Sean Butler,” Huggins said. “Da’Sean is the first one in every day, the last one to leave, he’s got great respect from his teammates, he’s a wonderful, wonderful human being to be around and I think that permeates down through your whole team.

“We’ve just got good guys. Everybody keeps asking me what our strength is, and the truth is we’ve got really good guys. We’ve got good guys and they like each other, they play their butts off and they’re just good people.”

Waiting for West Virginia (31-6) in the Final Four is the lone top seed remaining, the Duke Blue Devils.

While West Virginia has spent 51 years trying to get back to this point, the Blue Devils (33-5) are making their 11th appearance since 1986 under Mike Krzyzewski, winning national titles in 1991, ‘92 and 2001.

Don’t expect the Mountaineers to be intimidated by the success of the Blue Devils. While Duke holds a 17-7 advantage over West Virginia, the Mountaineers won their last meeting, a 73-67 win over the Blue Devils in the 2008 regional semifinals.

Huggins credits the late-Al McGuire, who led Marquette to the 1977 national title, with the philosophy that he has taken with him on coaching stops since ‘84 at Akron, Cincinnati, Kansas State and West Virginia.

“I asked Al one time when did you know when you had arrived at Marquette, and you knew you were going to be in every game no matter who you played or where you played,” Huggins said. “He said, ‘When we were able to walk into any venue without fear.’

“I think if you look at our record and look at what our guys have done so far in these games, I think we have shown we are there. We certainly had great respect for Kentucky, and we have great respect for Duke, but there is a difference between respecting your opponent and fearing them and I don’t think our guys fear anybody.”

West Virginia started its run to the Final Four by winning the Big East tournament championship. When that game came to an end, even Huggins — known for his aggressive, sometimes abrasive personality — shed a tear or two.

“We’re in the largest city in the world, the most famous arena in the world and they are playing “Country Roads” throughout the loudspeaker, and I was not going to get choked up,?” Huggins said. “John Denver probably would have cried.”

—Contact Brian Woodson

at bwoodson@bdtonline.com

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