I’m out the door here soon to trek to Manhattan for tomorrow night’s Gotham Classic doubleheader. WVU v. North Carolina State follows Richmond v. Pepperdine, so figure we’ll tip a bit after 9:30 p.m. on ESPN2. This is WVU’s first game at Madison Square Garden since a bad loss to UConn in the 2012 Big East Tournament, but this is the first of a few maneuvers for the Mountaineers to firm up their footing in the metropolitan New York City area.

The team traveled yesterday and will have all of today and tomorrow to see the sights, but they won’t have one prominent member of their traveling party.

“I’ll drop them off and say, ‘Be back by this time,’ ” he said. “I’m not going to walk around with them. You try and tell them, ‘Don’t buy any watches,’ and the first thing they do is run and buy watches. That’s part of the experience and guys talk about it when they’re 50 years old. They say, ‘I thought I was buying Gucci, but when I looked at it, it said “ucci” and there was no “G,” but it was only $30.’

“Yeah, but if you walked around the corner, it was only $15.”

It wasn’t long ago WVU relied heavily on that area for stars. The starting lineup from the Final Four team was all from there, but this team has really only one player with strong ties. Tarik Phillip is from Brooklyn. Jaysean Paige is from New York the state, and that had a lot of people asking him about what it’d be like to play in the Garden tomorrow. I thought he was a little confused, and probably because he’s from Jamestown. That’s just about as from the Big Apple as Morgantown is.

Whatever the roster, the Mountaineers are there tomorrow night and then again next year to play Virginia for the Jimmy V Classic and Huggins said he wants to play more there because he wants to recruit more there. This is good.

Speaking of recruiting, interim AD Keli Cunningham says she won’t be the next AD and will only be helping E.G.G. recruit Oliver Luck’s successor.

“I do, however, plan on working closely with president Gee and identifying our next athletic director,” she said. “I don’t anticipate being a candidate for the permanent spot mostly because of the timing of this opening. I’ve only been heavily involved in the administration and in day-to-day operations for the past year.”

… we’re not convinced. A couple people reached out to me last night and told me to take that lightly because she’s far from a non-candidate. She just happens to be the one WVU knows the most about right now and (she knows) she can’t get in the way in the event WVU does find and land a better fit. “What’d you expect her to say?” The process could well come back around  to her.

Needless to say, this is just getting started.