The Sock 'Em, Bust 'Em Board Because that's our custom

Suits him well

Bob Huggins is, quite clearly, not a fan of suits.

“The reality is why do you spend $1,000 dollars on a suit when after you wear it three times, it smells and you can’t wear it anymore,” he said. “I don’t know who the first coach was who started wearing a suit, and I don’t know why he did it.”

Yet the WVU men’s basketball coach donned one for the first 21 games this season, a trend that hit a brick wall when Huggins wore an all-gold number while the Mountaineers suffered a humiliating 62-39 loss at home to Cincinnati. He’d gone with the more identifiable pullover ever since.

“Someone brought me a pullover and I coached the second half that way,” he said. “After the game, the AD (former Cincinnati Athletic Director Bob Goin) said it was a great look. He said, ‘I think you look a lot more comfortable coaching like that.’ So I wore it. He liked it. Some people didn’t.”

Everything changed — again — Monday night against Pitt.

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Broken glass everywhere

If you’ve watched Joe Alexander dunk, you could probably guess he’d like to inflict great damage on a backboard. Well, you’d be right.

“I intend to break one,” Alexander said. “That’s one of my goals. The goal of all dunkers is to break a backboard.”

The stars align tonight. Raftery will offer his colorful commentary for tonight’s 7 p.m. ESPN game when WVU plays host to Pitt inside the Coliseum.

“I have no idea how you’d do it, but my guess is you have to weigh a lot and you need to throw it down really hard,” said Alexander, who leads WVU with 15.1 points and 6.0 rebounds per game after finishing with 32 points and 10 rebounds Saturday against Connecticut.  

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This sounds familiar, yes?

Pitt at West Virginia. Senior Night. A whole lot on the line. Spooky.

This may very well be an elimination game for WVU. Pitt’s probably in the NCAA Tournament already. The resume is a little stronger and a road win would push the Panthers over the top, for sure. The guess is WVU is in, but barely and only if the season ended right now … and obviously, the season does not end right now. Getting swept by a team you so closely resemble isn’t a great distinction.

Coach Bob Huggins was asked if his team needed a signature victory.

“Marquette’s not a signature win?” he said calmly, but clearly annoyed at the insinuation. “You’re listening to the wrong people. That’s people trying to make a living. I’ve got no problem with people making a living, but to say we don’t have a signature win is ridiculous. And we’re hopefully going to end up with 10 or 11 wins in this league. That’s not good enough? If that’s not good enough, then we have problems. We have serious problems.”

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Friday Feedback

We begin with a counter perpetuated by Team Rodriguez against WVU and a request to depose Ed Pastilong. One part was somewhat intriguing.

In the deposition notice filed at the courthouse on High Street in Morgantown, Pastilong was asked to produce several documents, including any personal documents regarding the employment contract and dispute between Rodriguez and WVU, those containing information “given by the Athletic Department of West Virginia University to any … person associated with the news media concerning Richard Rodriguez from December 1, 2006 to present,” those Pastilong had from the WVU Foundation or “any affiliated entity” such as the Mountaineer Athletic Club, as well as Pastilong’s diary/calendar for 2007, which shows meeting dates with Rodriguez.  

That’s pretty specific and leads me to believe they have an idea they know what they’re looking for in a general sense. Team Rodriguez plans to interrogate about a dozen officials and one wonders if certain media might be on the list. There was a lot of sourcing going as a lot of sensitive material was presented to the public.

Also of note:

– Eddie’s diary? “Dear diary: Just had a Diet Pepsi. I prefer Diet Coke. Will try Diet Sprite later. Do they make Diet 7-Up? Casazza called. Perhaps he knows.”
– Team Rodriguez wants audits of the 1100 Club — I can’t get my hands on them, but lawyers can…why didn’t I just get a lawyer? — as a way to explore WVU’s admitted use of 1100 Club money for non-1100 Club purposes. What this will prove, I don’t know. It certainly doesn’t justify walking out on a contract.
– Quote Rodriguez’s lawyer: The university “thinks they’ve got $4 million coming to them, but they are ignoring the fact that they probably breached the agreement…” Wait, what? So that $287,758.28 payment to Rodriguez last month — mind you, on the exact date it was due by — constitutes a breach? Who knew?

Onto the Feedback. As always comments appear as posted. In other words, any edits I conduct breach our contract.

Karl said:

Do you think with Pastilong gone there’s a chance Coach Rodriguez might come back? That would be awesome!

That would be awesome!

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Bill Stewart goes Krogering

West Virginia’s football coach helped celebrate the grand opening of the new Kroger on 705 in Morgatown today. … You’re looking for punchline, right? I’ve got nothing.

Rich Rodriguez taking me places I’ve never been, once more, with feeling… (And doesn’t WVU come off as so angelic in trying to expedite the trial?)

Wakefield said this morning the university’s Board of Governors is concerned that if the lawsuit doesn’t move quickly through court, Rodriguez’s new job at the University of Michigan and his busy schedule will lead to the litigation dragging on.

“We recognize that with Mr. Rodriguez being the head coach at Michigan, and with things like fall practice starting in August and the football season, his attorneys might try to argue things can’t proceed in the fall because of his schedule,” Wakefield said. “WVU wants the case resolved quickly, and by expediting it, we can do that and accommodate Mr. Rodriguez’s schedule.”

Off to the airport. Should be home sometime around Sunday. WVU’s RPI is at No. 34 now and the consensus is split UConn and Pitt, beat St. Johns, win at least one game in the Big East Tournament and the Mountaineers get an invitation to the NCAA Tournament. Has to be some combination of four wins that must include St. John’s and UConn and/or Pitt and one or two wins in the Garden. Can’t lose to St. John’s – period. Can’t lose to UConn and Pitt and hope to get in without anything less than making the finals of the Big East Tournament.

Be on the lookout for black eyes

Checking out Pat Forde’s “Forde Minutes” yesterday, I was rather amused to see Siena Coach Fran McCaffery’s wife needs a lesson in bench decorum — and that they were both ejected from a game in 2006. The best part? Siena’s nickname is the Saints!

Fortunately, I read on and was treated with another tidbit.

Spies tell The Minutes that a Big East coach who shall remain nameless (38) recently got into a halftime argument with one of his assistants in a hallway outside the locker room. According to a source, it escalated to the point where punches were thrown.

I know it wasn’t Bob Huggins. It just wasn’t. We’d know about it. Either he would have made a joke about it in his postgame press conference and grouped it among his halftime adjustments or someone would have come forth with the blow-by-blow and been proud of the winner. That’s how these Mountaineers are wired.

We’ll probably know after the season when a coach is fired or loses an assistant or assistants. I have a not-so-wild guess because I can’t believe how this man coaches and figured it was a matter of time until someone had enough. Perhaps some beat writers will press the players, who are probably done following the leader and might divulge the dust-up.

I believe I’ve written two blogs and three newspaper features on WVU’s women’s basketball team this season — and the Mountaineers are 0-4 in subsequent games. They’ve lost five games all year, including last night at Pitt. Eh. I guess it happens if you write enough. I remember writing a column years back that highlighted about a dozen things I’d completely jinxed with my words. I called a high school baseball coach to do a season preview a few days later and he (jokingly?) declined — he was busy and a colleague ended up doing the story. Said team would go to the state tournament.

Anyhow, included in that column was Jerry Wainright, who was then coaching up John Beilein’s loaded leftovers at the University of Richmond. The Spiders were 12-6 and had won four straight heading into a big game against Xavier. They went 4-7 the rest of the season.

Well, Wainwright, really one of the best defensive coaches in the country, now coaches DePaul, which is tonight’s opponent for West Virginia in what is essentially a must-win for any postseason chances. I don’t think the Blue Demons are as bad as their 10-16 record — they’ve won five Big East games — but I don’t think they need me jinxing them, either.

The Blue Demons have lost their last two games by a combined seven points, squandering a lead at Connecticut and missing shots at the end against Seton Hall.

“The good thing is we’ve gone right to the wire,” Wainwright said. “The bad thing is we’ve gone right to the wire. How do we react? It’s almost like somebody showing you a piece of candy through the glass window.”

To avoid sucking on lemons in mid-March, DePaul needs to sweeten its shooting, especially against West Virginia.

Villanova is the only Big East team to exceed 70 points against the Mountaineers, who hold opponents to 61.3 points per game, third best in the conference.

“That puts a lot of pressure on our offense,” Wainwright said. “West Virginia has the best midrange game in our league.”

Did I say THREE HOURS?

Woops. I meant five hours…with absolutely no promise of getting out of here tonight. Blizzard-like conditions (I’m told) and planes can’t land/take off like that. Also, per the entertaiment that just occurs in airport establishments, I just saw a 20-something shove a 50-something who was weraring a Steelers cap and a Margaritaville T-shirt. Never fear…they were arguing about the Democratic candidates. They are now doing shots. All is well…

Fun at the airport

I’m not sure I can explain how shocked I was when I arrived at gate C 53 this afternoon and discovered my strategically planned — read: allowed me to sleep in — flight to Chicago had been delayed THREE HOURS. Then I had an unforgettable discussion with the gate attendant who told me I might want to ”examine other ways” to get to O’Hare.

”OK…but isn’t that, you know, your job?”
”(Stare)”

Sidebar: This happens to me far too frequently now, but was once rare. I was rarely ever delayed until the 2004-05 basketball season when I’m convinced I caught John Beilein’s perpetual travel problems. Remember the struggle getting to the Big East Tournament in 2004? Well, after I was caught in a handful of coinciding delays after that, I accused him of as much when we were delayed in Oklahoma City after the O’Reilly All-College Classic before Christmas ’05. He addresed my mock frustration with an apology…and we sat on the runway for 70 minutes.

WVU almost always flew commercial then and I was somehow seated next to Johannes Herber. He read a German novel and I’m pretty sure my IQ jumped seven points that day. We were like two hours late ariving in Pittsburgh, Herber made like O.J. through the terminal and he still missed his connecting flight that was supposed to take him to a friend’s place, where he’d spend the holiday. Beilein went well out of his way to find Herber and Herber ended up driving with Mike Gansey to Cleveland and made his flight the next day. End sidebar…

In case you couldn’t tell, I’m entirely bored here. Following my mind-numbing chat with the attendant, it was agreed I was better off waiting out the delay. I found a place that welcomes 21-year-olds, from where I write this on my MotoQ as Space Hog riffs over the speakers. Along the way I saw something quite surprisng. A WVU fan was wearing a dark blue No. 14 football jersey.

Not unusual you say? I agreed at first. WVU fans are common in this airport and I thought it was a Jason Gwaltney, which was once as popular as Noel Devine’s No. 7 before Noel Devine. At worst, it was a Charles Hales, who was popular in a blue-collar way when he backed up Raheed Marshall.

It wasn’t a Gwaltney or a Hales or even a Hollywood Davis — officially gone from WVU, by the way, since before the Fiesta Bowl. It was a Brad Lewis jersey, name on the back and all! Even better, he was waiting on a flight to Detroit, perhaps to exact his revenge.

Weirdest throwback ever. For some reason, I felt the need to share this…