I’m off to the Coliseum, the airport and hopefully Phoenix. Might have time to wedge something in later today. If not, let’s take a look into the three people perhaps most responsible for this Sweet 16 appearance:

Bob Huggins:

Bob Huggins, born in West Virginia and now coaching West Virginia, has positioned himself to become a savior and, to some, a saint.

Surely this is a joke, right? That Bob Huggins? The one whose teams in Cincinnati were famous for coming up short, both in the tournament and the classroom? The one who endured a nasty fallout from said school and suffered from personal and health issues? The one who bailed on his next job, at Kansas State, after only two years?

Yes, that Bob Huggins, known as coach Hug-him right now in the giddy basketball state of West Virginia.

If you take issue with the thorny issues of his past, the people there will accuse you of trying to make a Mountaineer out of a molehill. To them, all that matters is that Huggins has West Virginia two wins from the Final Four, and best of all, he’s the stark opposite of the former football coach.

Joe Alexander (Warning: This contains the first printed reference to the NBA. Sssshhh…):

Last season, he started sleeping three nights a week on a blue leather couch in the Mountaineers’ locker room. No sheets or blankets, just team-issued sweats. He figured out a way to unscrew the safety lights that hang over the pool table in order to make it dark.

Although he lives only a few minutes away in an off-campus apartment, Alexander likes to shoot by himself late at night. When asked why he sleeps in the locker room, he offered his favorite kind of answer — a simple deadpan one: “It’s close to the court.”

Joe Mazzulla:

“Oh, man,” said forward Cam Thoroughman. “He just kept talking about how much he wanted to play against Paulus.”

Greg Paulus is Duke’s starting point guard and Mazzulla wasn’t particularly impressed. He sure wasn’t intimidated, either, and wasted no time in getting that point across.

Mazzulla took an inbound pass when he entered the game at the 14:06 mark and Paulus pounced. Mazzulla swung his torso left to right and caught Paulus with an elbow in the face.

It was no accident.

“I watched film of when they played N.C. State. Second play of the game, Paulus is guarding 94 feet from the basket and the N.C. State guy does the same thing,” Mazzulla said. “Paulus didn’t guard 94 feet from the basket the rest of the game and he didn’t guard me 94 feet from the basket the rest of the game. I don’t think he guarded me at all.”

Mazzulla went down the floor and scored on a short jumper.

“If I didn’t do that, Paulus may have thought he had an advantage on me and that would have given him confidence,” Mazzulla said.