My phone was off or abandoned throughout my vacation … until Friday night when I charged it for the first time all week. Rolled over at 8 a.m. Saturday and saw someone texted me hours earlier with the news about Huggins and his ribs. I was sure I was hallucinating. But no, that did happen … while I was gone. Jim Clements is now requesting I not take the first two days off next week, as was previously planned.  

Huggins and numerous other college coaches were in Las Vegas to recruit at a major AAU event. His brother, Larry, was in the city also as the coach of a team from Ohio.

Drew Payne, vice chair of WVU’s Board of Governors and a friend of Huggins and members of his family, spoke with Larry and said Huggins was injured while he packed and readied to leave for the airport and a flight to another AAU event.

“He’d been to a couple of games Friday and went back to the hotel room and he tripped on something and fell and hit a table going down,” Payne said. “He messed up his ribs and maybe even hit his head a little bit. But it was around 4 o’clock in the afternoon and he had to call his brother for help. He was in pretty bad pain and couldn’t really move.”

In a brief statement Saturday, Director of Athletics Oliver Luck said he believed Huggins, 56, would be released later that day. That later changed and Payne and Director of Athletics emeritus Ed Pastilong were under the impression Huggins needed to rest and doctors wanted to monitor the injury.

Broken ribs hinder breathing and simple movements and can’t be stabilized because that can increase pressure and pain and restrict breathing. Doctors also want to make sure the ribs and fragments hadn’t – and perhaps wouldn’t – cause internal damage.

Specifics are very unavailable right now and we’re probably going to be made to live with that … much the same as some people are probably going to have to live with presumptions and suspicion. You know what’s out there. Do with it what you like and I’ll continue my M.O. here. Perhaps we get some details sometime soon.

 I’m going to need a little time today to get my feet back beneath me, to get caught up and get ahead and to try to get to the bottom of some things, to schedule stuff, to answer emails and fire off several of my own. In the meantime, I’m not a guy who brags about vacations and I doubt this is bragging, but I thought I’d share two items …  

I’m an avid crabber. I grew up doing it and I’ve taught many others to do the same. I prefer lines, but I’ll use a trap, too. I had one for my trip and threw it in the water and actually did pretty well with it. Just not the first day. The second day was much more fruitful, though it started in a most unusual way. 

I use chicken for bait and you need the chicken to get really funky to be effective. That means leaving it out … and in this case and for the benefit of friends I was vacationing with it means leaving it outside and in the trap. I stepped outside Tuesday morning to get the trap and load it in the car and could smell it right away. 

I’d say I did a fine job cultivating attractive bait. 

That’s a possum and that’s actually a good thing — I was afraid it was a skunk and my week was ruined. Photogenics aside, this possum was pissed and let me know about it. A group of us decided rabies was not the way to go and that a call to animal control would be the wise move.

I did it and the guy was genuinely put off we’d troubled him for such a trivial matter: “All you gotta do is open the door and shake it out…” which is pretty much what I thought he was supposed to do. And he did with no gloves or bag or long pole or anything. 

There to witness all of this was the pool guy in all his pool guy glory.