We’re in the early part of the spring/summer fundraising season which puts WVU’s coaches in various spots throughout the state to rub elbows with people who show up at dinners and golf outings and the like.

It’s a well-intended circuit called the Coaches’ Caravan, in that the coaches show up and answer questions and tell stories and show who they are outside the lines that define the games they play. In turn, WVU makes some money that’s put to good use in the Mountaineer Athletic Club.

It’s usually a fun night and sometimes it’s funny, like it was two weeks ago in Wheeling.

There was some talk about the WVU baseball team’s surprising run to the top of the Big 12 standings, fitting on a night when men’s soccer coach Marlon LeBlanc cracked the first joke, aimed at Holgerson and Huggins, effectively putting himself on a tee for the rest of the evening.

”Given the seasons you guys had,” LeBlanc said, ”This might be the first time this crowd is more interested in soccer.”

He later added, ”I get the mic so few times, I have to take a couple of swings.”

It was probably a bad idea.

LeBlanc, who isn’t the tallest fellow in the world, first took a rebuttal from Holgorsen.

”Marlon, in case you didn’t know, is the men’s soccer coach,” Holgorsen said. ”And he’s also the guy that came up here and disappeared behind this podium.”

Later, it was Huggins’ turn.

”He’s good isn’t he?” Huggins asked of LeBlanc. ”Tony (Caridi, the event’s emcee) came over and said, ‘I could listen to Marlon talk all night.’ For a while, I thought I might have to.”

Then he poked a bit of fun at the sport LeBlanc coaches.

”We’ve talked about this, too,” Huggins said. ”Marlon wonders why he can’t get people to games? The score is 1-0. Just think, Dana, if we had to play 1-0.”

”I keep telling him to take the goalie out and fast break. If the score was 63-59, somebody would go. How about if we stood a 7-2 guy in front of the rim and just swatted everything that came through? It’s goaltending, Marlon, that’s what they call it. It’s a good basket – except in Syracuse.’

Yes!

That’s the draw and that’s part of the idea behind the tour. There’s no stop in Morgantown, where WVU plays. They go around the state and try to give back to the people who wear gold and buy hats and travel long distances for single-game or season tickets.

It’s a little like that with the media, too. The longer these events go on in the parts of the state where WVU rarely ever plays the more the coaches do the pre-event interviews with the media that rarely ever gets to cover WVU on its home turf.

I’ve always thought most of the coaches, perhaps out of a sense of obligation, did a pretty nice job giving good answers to that particular audience. Dana Holgorsen, for example, might owe a reporter at an event in Parkersburg who Holgorsen hardly knows and barely ever sees a newer or better answer to certain questions than he owes to, say, me, who bugs him all the time.

That reporter than gives life to his story that can’t be found elsewhere and people read the story and go, ‘Yo, I’ve got to go to this event next season.”

It’s the circle of fundraising.

Bob Huggins is a willing participant and he does all the interviews, though all the interviews generally pursue the same point during an offseason. This one won’t be any different, what with the 13-19 record and the roster turnover, but it looks like Huggins is settling in with his replies and revealing some very useful insight about WVU’s oft speculated future.

And you know Huggins: He finds an answer and he leans on it for as long as it will support him. This new tactic sounds fun, and if not more appealing, than surely more appeasing.

”Hopefully we’re going to make some shots,” he said. ”I can tell you this, we’re going to rebound that thing. We went from being the worst rebounding team in the Big East to the best rebounding team in the Big East to one of the worst rebounding teams in the Big 12. We’re just not going to do that anymore.

”If it doesn’t go in, don’t worry about it. We’re going to get it back. That’s kinda what I’ve decided. I’m not sure we’re going to get it up the floor. ..”

Bigger guys who can shoot, as Huggins believes many of these new guys can, might help with the style of play. In the Big 12, even the centers can knock down long-range shots, which left no room for Big East-style posting up.

”We have four guys that can bounce it, which is kinda what that league is about,” Huggins said of the Big 12. ”We didn’t have that.”