Huggins Regrets Redshirting Freshmen
Things are bad for West Virginia basketball. Real bad. The Mountaineers are now two games under .500 on the season and have an abysmal 3-14 record in conference play.
Head coach Bob Huggins has been critical of this team from the early stages of the season and has become increasingly frustrated as the year has moved on. The desire, the will to win, the competitiveness just hasn't existed with this group and it doesn't take a Hall of Fame coach to be able to see it. Many began to wonder if this would be the team that would entice Huggins to ride off into retirement, but that doesn't appear to be happening anytime soon. It seems very unlikely that he would leave the program in its current state. His goal when he first returned to Morgantown was to make this a championship-caliber program that would be more than just relevant on a year basis. I get the feeling that until Huggins feels comfortable with the future of the program, he won't be as willing to hang it up.
All that said, a lot needs to be done in the coming months to turn things back around. They must have a better approach to the transfer portal and I hate to say this, but get the guys out of the program that are repeat offenders - guys who he says don't listen, have their own agendas, and so on. There's no room for that in this program or any program for that matter, but especially not when you're trying to get back to winning ways.
Despite all the bad that the Mountaineer fan base has witnessed over the past couple of months, there is some hope for the future. Huggins has repeatedly praised the freshman class for their work ethic and their ability to make an impact. Seth Wilson and Kobe Johnson have received significant playing time in the back-half of the schedule, which will prepare them for their more expanded roles next season. With just one game left in the regular season, Huggins had a moment to reflect on some of the decisions that were made in regards to the freshmen and wishes he would have played all of them instead of trying to save a year of their eligibility by redshirting them.
"We don't compete. We don't have competitive guys. We don't have the guys that we've had in the past who are in the huddle like, 'come on, come on, come on we've got to guard' like, we just don't have that man. It's my fault. At the end of the day, I sign off on these guys being a part of West Virginia basketball," Huggins said. "I'm going to be honest with you. Here's the problem, I've got four freshmen sitting over there. I can't play them. I don't want to burn a year's eligibility for them because I can't get these other guys to do what they're supposed to do. I'm not going to do that to them. We had a couple that played early so their eligibility was already burnt, but I've got a couple more over here that could have helped us...would have helped us. But why take a year away from them because somebody else won't do their job? Honestly, I feel good about the freshmen coming back. I think those guys are going to really help us. I think they'll compete. I think they'll play as a team. They've got a lot of good in them. Then, we've just got to make sure that we do the right thing with recruiting other guys."
In his postgame press conference following the Oklahoma game, Huggins did talk about the idea of letting the young guys play and let them try and make a run, similar to what he did with Jordan McCabe, Emmitt Matthews Jr., and Derek Culver three years ago. That team made it all the way to the semifinals of the Big 12 Conference tournament before falling to Kansas. At the moment, that doesn't seem to be the plan. He doesn't want to sacrifice a year of their eligibility and likely miss out on the tournament anyways. Some changes will probably be made to the lineup, but don't expect James Okonkwo or Jamel King to see any action down the final stretch of the season.
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