Huggins refuses to look back

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PHOENIX — Bob Huggins was drifting in and out of consciousness but felt enough pain to know his chest was burning just a tad less than the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. He asked the paramedic about an estimated time of arrival for the ambulance reaching a hospital. He was told 22 minutes.

Huggins: "I said, ‘Man, I don’t have 22 minutes.’ They pat you on the leg and say, ‘I have never lost a patient.’ I said, ‘You aren’t dealing with no 75-year-old lady. I have dealt with pain. I’m not going to make it.’ "

So they aborted the route and chose a closer facility. You shouldn’t be surprised. Huggins faced death six years ago like he might the basketball player who doesn’t block out — he dared it to blink. Like the athlete, it eventually did.

Sixteen teams remain in the NCAA Tournament, and you would be challenged to discover one whose coach has done a better job directing his respective group to the event’s second week than Huggins.

West Virginia is here to meet Xavier in one West Regional semifinal today at US Airways Center. The winner plays the survivor of the other semifinal, between UCLA and Western Kentucky, on Saturday. The winner of that advances to the Final Four.

It would be an upset in seed for the No. 7 Mountaineers to make it. Not in much else.

ABC doesn’t do home makeovers to the extreme Huggins redesigned a West Virginia team picked 10th in the Big East Conference and one consisting of players who signed with the idea that offense meant any shot beyond the 3-point line, defense meant your best zone effort and lifting weights meant you missed the memo about not doing much of it.

They signed to play for the tranquil John Beilein, who left for Michigan after last season. They inherited the fiery Huggins, who departed Kansas State after one year to lead his alma mater.

They came for the English professor and ultimately got the drill sergeant.

"Coach Beilein was always teach first and yell second," Mountaineers sophomore forward Da’Sean Butler said. "Coach Huggins is yell first and second and teach third. But he yells to make us better, and obviously we are."

Better. Bigger. Stronger. Weights are now as much part of the daily routine as breathing, as embraced as man defense. Huggins always has liked to roll out a treadmill at practice, plug it in, find anyone not executing to a level he prefers and have them run for nearly a minute at 15 mph.

You either sprint or fall off, which makes you wonder how long Huggins had some of his past players at Cincinnati on the machine who were arrested for punching a police horse and another who taped his roommate to a chair, burned him with a heated coat hanger and stabbed him in the leg.

But here’s the thing: Huggins’ players love him. Always have. Years later, they still call, write, text, defend him to the maximum degree. It’s no different with this current team, with a bunch of kids who weren’t recruited by him and knew only of his heated reputation. What begins as fear eventually turns to respect for those who endure his wrath. Weird but true.

"He might be in your face, but as soon as practice is over, his arm is around you," Mountaineers senior center Jamie Smalligan said. "He looks after all of us."

Most coaches wear fake like they do school logos. They have more cheesy lines than your average romantic comedy. Not Huggins. Phony is hard to play among all that brazenness.

For all the tarnished truths about his notorious career — players’ encounters with the law (several), low graduation rates (can you say Blutarsky?), Huggins’ DUI that led to his dismissal following 16 seasons at Cincinnati — the one thing you can’t accuse him of is avoiding opinion. He pretty much says and does things his way, others’ views be damned.

It shaped him into a controversial figure and terrific coach.

"I understand what happens," he said. "I understand to make a good story, there’s going to be white hats and black hats. Otherwise, we never would have had a cowboy movie … I’m 54 years old, had (his heart) shocked back to life three times, you know? I’m fine with it.

"I hope I’m a little more mature and a little smarter. I’m not big on looking back. I’m not big on living in the past … But I haven’t really changed all that much (following his 2002 heart attack).

"I would like to tell you I eat better, but look at me. That’s obviously not the case."

He coaches hard, lives hard, exists on his own terms and doesn’t apologize for it. He’s the kind of guy who dares death to blink, and it does.

Ed Graney’s column is published Sunday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday. He can be reached at 383-4618 or egraney@reviewjournal.com.