Welcome to the 98th edition of the Friday Feedback. I know what you’re thinking about 100 Friday Feedbacks and I’ll spare you the suspense: Yes, it’ll be commemorated; no, there’ll be no magicians.
I was given $5 to go to the LaundroMutt to wash the message board grime off the blog, only to find it wasn’t necessary. Things got pretty intense, a little personal and a tad ugly … but only in an Elisha Cuthbert way. It may have looked bad, but when you got close, it was actually OK. Plus, there are no rights and wrongs. If there were, we wouldn’t be here to discuss and debate.
Huggins v. Beilein is an appropriate representation. Again, I don’t think we can accurately say one is/can be better than the other if only because there are too many variables. I also think it’s impossible to compare, not only because they’re so different, but because the samples are too brief.
Were Beilein’s teams more fun to watch? Probably so and a Huggins team doesn’t paint as pretty a picture, but I think there’s something to be said about the potential for sustained success when you lean on defense and rebounding rather than 3-pointers and backcuts. That’s not a knock on Beilein, but when you don’t guard and rebound and a team takes away your offensive strengths, you can be in trouble. It’s harder to take away Huggins’ strentghs and I think the way this team struggles to shoot is more of a rare occurrence than people seem to think. Then again, Beilein’s teams won in March.
Beilein arrived in a different and more fortuitous scenario. WVU was rock bottom. Forget the 8-20. They couldn’t get Huggins. They couldn’t keep Dakich. Beilein had a lot of rope. There were almost no expectations unless you consider avoiding the NCAA’s death penalty an expectation. He really started with a blank slate and had the, um, freedom to recruit Herber and Durisseau-Collins, retain Pittsnogle and invite his son along and let them grow. As good as Huggins was his first year, Beilein was better. Try starting four freshman as a first-year coach in the Big East. That team didn’t belong going 14-15. And then Beilein, quite frankly, got lucky scandal erupted at St. Bonaventure and the school was hit with a postseason ban, which then urged Mike Gansey to transfer. Imagine if that never happened.
Huggins, meanwhile, came in with far greater expectations based in no small part because of what Beilein had accomplished and facilitated. (Devil’s Advocate: Say Huggins resigned April 15 to become athletic director and Andy Kennedy was hired as coach. Wouldn’t Kennedy then have even greater expectations?)
But Huggins won and you might argue that team didn’t belong going 26-11. Granted, he had an older roster with more talent and those kids desperately wanted to prove people wrong, but they were playing a very different game in a much stronger Big East … and remember, they were 11-7 in the conference and then beat UConn in the Big East tourney, but they needed Joe Mazzulla’s overtime-forcing layup to win at St. John’s as a postseason catapult and then jumped on board while Joe Alexander made the leap. It’s a razor’s edge sometimes.
The difference? The success came quicker for Huggins, which accelerated the arrival of heightened expectations. Beilein was allowed to grow into his success … and remember, they probably don’t make the 2005 NCAA Tournament and then make the run unless they beat Villanova in the semifinals.
I guess things today are only as good as they were yesterday and Huggins has been good, though some of it has to do with a foundation that was in place for his arrival. Ask Frank Martin about that out at Kansas State.
I really like John and I’ll always admire him for a lot of different reasons. I think he could be where Huggins is now — recruiting nationally, playing the third-toughest schedule while sitting at No. 5 in the RPI, starring on television, so on and so forth — or at least in a comparable position, but not as quickly as Huggins has arrived. I think his Mountaineers could compete nationally, but I think Huggins’ Mountaineers are capable of making it a more regular event.
The way Beilein worked, his teams were more likely to be really good for a year or two every two or three years — it takes time to learn mentally and mature physically to be great in his systems — though I’ll allow we might not know for sure what might have been at WVU, or anywhere else, because he rarely stays for long. Huggins, because his ideals aren’t as “complicated” or attached to experience and are reached easier by the talented players he recruits, seems to have more staying power. Seems.
The best part? We don’t know and it can all change tomorrow. Heck, it will all change, but we never know how.
Onto the Feedback. As always, comments appear as posted. In other words, accidents happen.
SheikYbuti said:
The heck with comparing Huggins and Beilein; I find it more provocative to compare Huggins and Mike Carey (except for their respective wardrobes). Which of their teams will advance farther in the NCAA tourney? Depending on the day, my mind changes like . . . well, like a girl changes clothes.
Both teams are well-regarded, but only the women have a frickin’ baller.
And away we go…
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