Between The Eers: Bring Huggs Back???
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00:00 [MUSIC]
00:10 That West Virginia coaching search, yeah, it's coming up.
00:14 Just a handful of games left here in the regular season for WV men's basketball.
00:19 And at this point, it seems inevitable that the Mountaineers are probably gonna
00:23 head in a different direction from Josh.
00:26 I shouldn't say a different direction, but
00:28 I will choose to look outward externally for the next permanent head coach at WVU.
00:35 And I promised a couple of weeks ago that I wouldn't really
00:41 start diving into my opinions on the coaches that could be in the mix,
00:47 the candidates, and that I was gonna shy away from
00:53 really kind of talking about the whole coaching search until the season comes to an end.
00:59 I think that's the right thing to do.
01:00 I think it's unfair to Josh, even though, I mean, like I said,
01:04 at this point, it seems inevitable.
01:06 But if there's something that's out there that is reported, or
01:11 there are reported names, I'll talk about it.
01:14 But I'm not gonna start diving deep into it until, like I said,
01:20 at the end of the season.
01:20 However, there is one aspect of this that I really do wanna talk about,
01:25 and that is, of course, you guessed it, Bob Huggins.
01:29 [BLANK_AUDIO]
01:32 I don't even really know where to begin, because it's such
01:37 a sensitive topic to talk about, right?
01:42 I mean, you've got a portion of the fan base, how much, I don't know.
01:47 Seems like a bigger portion than I would probably have thought,
01:53 that are really wanting Ren Baker to hire him back.
01:58 You have most of the fan base, I would say,
02:02 that wants Ren to just move on completely,
02:07 bring in somebody new, somebody fresh, and see where that takes him.
02:15 [BLANK_AUDIO]
02:17 I'm more on the latter.
02:20 As awesome as it would be to see Bob Huggins, a West Virginia kid,
02:27 Morgantown guy, WVU alum, West Virginian through and through,
02:32 to run this team to an NCAA championship,
02:36 it just doesn't make sense.
02:39 Put yourself in Ren Baker's shoes, okay?
02:45 A year ago, this man was clearly going through some things.
02:51 I'm not going to dive into those things, we all know what they are.
02:57 It's personal, but it was very clear and
03:01 very evident that he needed to be in the team.
03:06 But it was very clear and very evident that he needed time away.
03:11 And I'm not saying that somebody can completely change in a year,
03:16 because obviously, from everything that I've heard,
03:20 he's made tremendous progress, he's doing really well, he looks good.
03:26 But sometimes, you just can't necessarily gain all of that trust back,
03:31 especially in one year.
03:33 I don't know that it would be ideal or smart,
03:38 the right thing to do, for Ren to put his job on the line for
03:45 a guy that put him in the tough position that he put him in a year ago.
03:51 If you hire Bob Huggins back,
03:55 you not only have to worry about the on-court success.
04:02 Because that is still very big in this, right?
04:07 The whole thing is getting West Virginia back on track.
04:10 It's going to be the same whether it's Bob Huggins, which it's not going to be.
04:14 Josh Eilert, which it doesn't seem like it's going to be, or
04:20 an interim head coach, or excuse me, a head coach from the outside.
04:24 That is going to be the number one goal.
04:30 But, and it's a very, very big but here.
04:34 With Huggins, you have what happened last year, looming in the background.
04:42 And that's again, not to say that he's going to do that same mistake again, but
04:49 you're running a risk.
04:50 You're running a risk that something could happen.
04:56 And if something does happen, you're back at square one.
05:02 I don't know, and yes, we could sit here and say, well,
05:08 Josh Eilert could do something, a new coach from the outside could do something.
05:13 Yes, we get that, a lot of hypotheticals.
05:17 But with Huggins, it's happened.
05:23 You can't necessarily go back to somebody to pull you and
05:28 your program out from under the dirt from a guy who's still trying to
05:33 cleanse himself and do what he needs to do to improve his own health.
05:38 I would love it, like I said, I would have loved for
05:44 Bob Huggins to be the guy that took West Virginia back to another Final Four.
05:50 He's already done it once, but to not just get him to the Final Four,
05:54 get to the title game and win.
05:55 That has been his dream since he was yay high.
06:00 And it would have been really cool for WVU to win their first ever national
06:05 championship in a major sport with him as the guy to do it.
06:11 Unfortunately, that time passed.
06:20 It's hard to believe.
06:22 I think we all dreamt up of this great send off for
06:27 Huggs where he either goes on this farewell tour and
06:30 we all kind of know this is his last run.
06:33 Or he probably wouldn't have wanted it that way.
06:38 So he probably would have called it quits at the end of his career and
06:42 not given the public announcement until the end of the year.
06:46 But we would have had that sense.
06:48 We would have known.
06:49 Maybe it comes out a week or so before the end of the year.
06:53 That way they can give him the proper send off.
06:55 But not all good stories come to a storybook end.
07:03 And I think that's gonna be the case here with Bob Huggins at WVU because
07:08 you just can't risk it, man.
07:11 Like you just can't.
07:13 If you're Ren Baker, your job is to put this program in the upper
07:18 echelon of the Big 12, you also have to put these kids and
07:23 their futures into somebody that you can 1,000% trust.
07:31 As much as Ren likes Huggs, and as much of a relationship as those two have,
07:39 you can still have a little bit of skepticism there.
07:43 I don't trust all my friends 100%.
07:48 I'm sure you don't.
07:49 There's some friends you're like, if it really comes down to it, I don't know.
07:54 [LAUGH] Are they gonna turn and do something?
07:58 Are they gonna revert back to themselves?
08:03 That's a tough thing to navigate.
08:08 But I just don't think it makes a whole lot of sense.
08:13 We'll see where they go.
08:15 But like I said, I think it's external.
08:17 I don't think it makes any sense to bring Huggs back.
08:20 And to be honest with you, if this was truly a possibility,
08:27 I mean, don't you think we would have heard something?
08:29 Don't you think that would have leaked by now?
08:32 We've heard all the names that have been leaked through ESPN and
08:38 the Associated Press or USA Today or whoever it was.
08:41 Not one mention of Bob Huggins yet.
08:44 We're a handful of games away from the regular season coming to an end.
08:50 If he was gonna be in the mix again, I think we would have heard that.
08:55 [MUSIC]
08:57 Just saying.
08:57 Let me know your thoughts in the comments section here on YouTube,
09:03 whether or not the Mountaineers should bring Bob Huggins back.
09:07 You know my opinion.
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09:15 And we'll be back here tonight to recap the action between the Mountaineers and
09:19 the Kansas State Wildcats on the Mountaineers Now post game show.
09:23 So take care and we'll see you then.
09:24 [MUSIC]
09:33 (upbeat music)