@wissox
Huggs has been an acquired taste for me.
I loathed him all those years at the Natti.
He, Knight and Izzo, really did turn the game into a massively more physical game of banging for spot control and I wish it had never happened.
But it did.
So I either have to let go of the game I love, or find the good in what it has become and who has evolved it. Self came from a much less physical background and he has made his peace with it. I figure I can, too.
What I have decided is that Huggins, like me, has had his heart in the right place about the game, and was trying to do the best he could by it, even if he erred at times. Huggs tried to use the game to improve some lives that even the integration of the game was not reaching. Higgs tried to devise a way to win with guys that were strong and athletic, but not super skilled.
Huggs opened the game up for many players black and white that were not quite football players, were also not yet skillful hoopahs. Izzy did the same thing.
It took awhile but I learned it was not unprecedented. Ward Piggy Lambert started playing Purdue football players as centers and forwards to bang for boards, bang up cutters, and knock guys off spots, so he only had to get 2 great guards to fast break opponents to death. He started doing it in the late 1920s or early 30s. It changed the game and created what we think of as the more physical Big Ten ball of the last 50 years. Lambert’s brawn ball peaked with a guard named THE INDIANA RUBBER MAN—John Wooden. Wooden evolved it into the UCLA WAY and won 10 rings in 11 years.
Huggs grew up in a very hard nosed part of the country. They are not easy persons to like, but if they accept you they have your back forever. And they have a code. And they are not known for mincing words.
He is what he is.
His sin was the bottle IMHO. He began to believe the rebel hype for awhile. For awhile he forgot to put the game and the young men first. But after his exile, KSU took a chance on him and he seemed to reconnect to the game. But he was still wired into the dark side of recruiting. Some how he kicked the recruiting jones, when he got back to his alma mater—WVU. He seemed to want to do right by the old school. He started trying to do it without the dark side’s recruits—with his kind of guys from the old days.
Don’t get me wrong. He is no Bo Ryan or Bill Self, but he has tried to come back from the dark side where he had strayed.
He is like Knight. He wants in the HOF. Knight sucked on Vitale for admission. Huggs is sucking on Self.
Self apparently has a soft spot for rogues like Eddie Sutton, Jerry Tarkanian, and Bob Huggins.
But whatever: the guy can coach.
