Post by elp525 on Jun 15, 2011 13:21:06 GMT -5
Wednesday June 15, 2011
by Jack Bogaczyk
Charleston Daily Mail
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - As Big East men's basketball waits for 2011-12 matchups and home-and-home foes to be determined, Bob Huggins still has plenty of questions about another conference piece of future schedules.
That would be the revamped Big East-SEC Challenge series. In the past four years, the series consisted of only two annual doubleheaders, one at a so-called Big East neutral site, another at an SEC-rooted neutral building.
Now, all 12 SEC teams play annually against 12 of the 16 (up to 17 in 2012-13 with TCU added) Big East teams, on home floors, six for each conference, over a three-night span on ESPN networks.
It's not that Huggins minds taking his West Virginia team to Mississippi State, which he will on Dec. 3. It's that the Bulldogs don't have to return the game to the WVU Coliseum. It's also that WVU might be one of the Big East teams skipped in the rotation next season.
"You don't know, and it makes it more difficult to schedule," Huggins said during my recent visit to his office. "I don't like the fact teams don't return the games. I just assumed that's the way it would work. They told me not necessarily.
"Let's just say I expressed my feelings on it (at the Big East meetings last month)."
Is it fair for a Big East school to have to go to Kentucky, Vanderbilt, Florida or Tennessee and not get a return game, or for an SEC team to go to Syracuse, Connecticut, WVU or Pitt and not get it returned? No.
"I couldn't agree with you more," Huggins said.
The intent on the Big East side (because the conference has more than 12 teams) is to play six times in the series over eight years. When the format was altered, WVU and Purdue agreed to push back their scheduled home-and-home renewal, Huggins said, because the Boilermakers also had to accommodate the ACC-Big Ten Challenge.
"We'll go to Purdue next year (2012-13) and they'll come here the next year," Huggins said.
Huggins said WVU still is writing to find out its two early season low major foes at home in the Las Vegas Classic this season. He said the Mountaineers' in-season tournaments the following two seasons would be the Old Spice Classic in Orlando, Fla., in 2012-13, and the Cancun Governor's Cup in Mexico in 2013-14.
"They want me to go to Hawaii (for the Maui Classic or Diamond Head Invitational). I've been to Hawaii (three times as coach) in Cincinnati. I don't want to go to Hawaii again. It's too far."
n n
A RECURRING murmur involving Mountaineer hoops is that 2010 state high school player of the year Noah Cottrill will one day return to the WVU program from his October 2010 indefinite suspension for what Huggins called "conduct unbecoming of a Mountaineer."
Cottrill, who starred at Poca and Logan high schools and Mountain State Academy, is not on the Mountaineers' radar, Huggins said. WVU is at the 13-scholarship maximum and there is no indication Cottrill is coming back as a walk-on, the coach said.
"I haven't spoken to Noah in months," Huggins said. "I don't know what he's doing."
If a player planned to be with the WVU team, wouldn't he be in Morgantown working out and enrolled in summer school now, I asked Huggins.
"You'd think that of most people, yeah," Huggins said.
So, what's the chance Cottrill will return this season?
"I don't think he will be," Huggins said.
n n
WITH WVU Athletic Director Oliver Luck recently explaining to me a few-months delay on the expected occupancy of the Mountaineers' new $25 million basketball practice facility, Huggins was asked if he were disappointed.
His stance was sort of in better-late-than-neverland.
"The older I've gotten, the less I worry about those kind of things," the WVU coach said. "If I were younger, I'd be bouncing off the walls about this stuff. They always told me to worry about the things you can control, not the things you can't control. The older I get, the more that's true."
Luck said he expects Huggins' and women's Coach Mike Carey's teams to be able to practice in the facility behind the WVU Coliseum by the opening of the 2011-12 season, but that the coaching staffs won't move offices into the practice building until after this coming season.
The West Virginia AD said the facility "truly will be state of the art ... then a couple years later somebody will build another one that tops it. That's how it works."
The so-called "House That Huggs Built" will be worth the wait, the veteran coach said.
"It's going to be a great, great help," Huggins said, "and we have no control over when it's done anyway. I concur with Oliver. I don't want to move in during the season. There's too much going on and too much otherwise to worry about then.
"If we can practice in there, get into locker rooms, showers, great. We'll move in after we're done next season."
by Jack Bogaczyk
Charleston Daily Mail
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - As Big East men's basketball waits for 2011-12 matchups and home-and-home foes to be determined, Bob Huggins still has plenty of questions about another conference piece of future schedules.
That would be the revamped Big East-SEC Challenge series. In the past four years, the series consisted of only two annual doubleheaders, one at a so-called Big East neutral site, another at an SEC-rooted neutral building.
Now, all 12 SEC teams play annually against 12 of the 16 (up to 17 in 2012-13 with TCU added) Big East teams, on home floors, six for each conference, over a three-night span on ESPN networks.
It's not that Huggins minds taking his West Virginia team to Mississippi State, which he will on Dec. 3. It's that the Bulldogs don't have to return the game to the WVU Coliseum. It's also that WVU might be one of the Big East teams skipped in the rotation next season.
"You don't know, and it makes it more difficult to schedule," Huggins said during my recent visit to his office. "I don't like the fact teams don't return the games. I just assumed that's the way it would work. They told me not necessarily.
"Let's just say I expressed my feelings on it (at the Big East meetings last month)."
Is it fair for a Big East school to have to go to Kentucky, Vanderbilt, Florida or Tennessee and not get a return game, or for an SEC team to go to Syracuse, Connecticut, WVU or Pitt and not get it returned? No.
"I couldn't agree with you more," Huggins said.
The intent on the Big East side (because the conference has more than 12 teams) is to play six times in the series over eight years. When the format was altered, WVU and Purdue agreed to push back their scheduled home-and-home renewal, Huggins said, because the Boilermakers also had to accommodate the ACC-Big Ten Challenge.
"We'll go to Purdue next year (2012-13) and they'll come here the next year," Huggins said.
Huggins said WVU still is writing to find out its two early season low major foes at home in the Las Vegas Classic this season. He said the Mountaineers' in-season tournaments the following two seasons would be the Old Spice Classic in Orlando, Fla., in 2012-13, and the Cancun Governor's Cup in Mexico in 2013-14.
"They want me to go to Hawaii (for the Maui Classic or Diamond Head Invitational). I've been to Hawaii (three times as coach) in Cincinnati. I don't want to go to Hawaii again. It's too far."
n n
A RECURRING murmur involving Mountaineer hoops is that 2010 state high school player of the year Noah Cottrill will one day return to the WVU program from his October 2010 indefinite suspension for what Huggins called "conduct unbecoming of a Mountaineer."
Cottrill, who starred at Poca and Logan high schools and Mountain State Academy, is not on the Mountaineers' radar, Huggins said. WVU is at the 13-scholarship maximum and there is no indication Cottrill is coming back as a walk-on, the coach said.
"I haven't spoken to Noah in months," Huggins said. "I don't know what he's doing."
If a player planned to be with the WVU team, wouldn't he be in Morgantown working out and enrolled in summer school now, I asked Huggins.
"You'd think that of most people, yeah," Huggins said.
So, what's the chance Cottrill will return this season?
"I don't think he will be," Huggins said.
n n
WITH WVU Athletic Director Oliver Luck recently explaining to me a few-months delay on the expected occupancy of the Mountaineers' new $25 million basketball practice facility, Huggins was asked if he were disappointed.
His stance was sort of in better-late-than-neverland.
"The older I've gotten, the less I worry about those kind of things," the WVU coach said. "If I were younger, I'd be bouncing off the walls about this stuff. They always told me to worry about the things you can control, not the things you can't control. The older I get, the more that's true."
Luck said he expects Huggins' and women's Coach Mike Carey's teams to be able to practice in the facility behind the WVU Coliseum by the opening of the 2011-12 season, but that the coaching staffs won't move offices into the practice building until after this coming season.
The West Virginia AD said the facility "truly will be state of the art ... then a couple years later somebody will build another one that tops it. That's how it works."
The so-called "House That Huggs Built" will be worth the wait, the veteran coach said.
"It's going to be a great, great help," Huggins said, "and we have no control over when it's done anyway. I concur with Oliver. I don't want to move in during the season. There's too much going on and too much otherwise to worry about then.
"If we can practice in there, get into locker rooms, showers, great. We'll move in after we're done next season."
