West Virginia Coaches Caravan arrives in the Mid-Ohio Valley | News, Sports, Jobs

West Virginia University football coach Neal Brown, left, autographs a picture for two individuals from Vienna, Ken Fowler (center) and Craig Deem during Wednesday’s WVU Coaches Caravan at Grand Pointe Conference and Reception Center.
(Photo by Kerry Patrick)

VIENNA — Bob Huggins is not one who loves to travel great distances.

However, the West Virginia University men’s basketball coach will have little choice to join his Mountaineers on a trip destined for Oregon and the Phil Knight Legacy. The loaded eight-team field, which includes the likes of Gonzaga, Purdue and Duke, is a way to reconnect with the co-founder of Nike — the same company which sponsors athletics at WVU.

The relationship began when Huggins coached at Cincinnati and the Bearcats became branded by the ‘swoosh’ logo.

“The tournament is a tremendous field and also a long way to go to play a ballgame,” Huggins said during his visit to the Mid-Ohio Valley Wednesday afternoon as the WVU Coaches Caravan made a stop at the Grand Pointe Conference and Reception Center. “We’re a Nike school at WVU. They supply shoes, gear .. everything for other sports at WVU. So when they called, in particular Phil Knight calls, that he wants you to play in this deal you can’t say no.

“I’ve known him for a long, long time. I did a Michael Jordan Fantasy Camp and actually got to spend a good deal of time around Phil Knight. It’s been a great run for me with Nike.”

The WVU Coaches Caravan also brought in football coach Neal Brown along with newly-appointed women’s basketball coach Dawn Plitzuweit. Brown enters his fourth season with the Mountaineers. Last year, WVU football won its final two games of the regular season to become bowl eligible then lost to Minnesota 18-6 in the Guaranteed Rate Bowl for a 6-7 finish.

“The short-term effects of the bowl game weren’t necessarily good because we didn’t play very well — especially on offense,” Brown said. “The long-term effects were beneficial. To get extended work with our young players, you could really tell the difference in the spring. They were further advanced based on the 10 to 12 practices they got.”

WVU football opens the 2022 season on Thursday, Sept. 1 at Pittsburgh then begins the Big 12 Conference schedule nine days later at home against Kansas. Over the course of the next 12 days, the Mountaineers host Towson then travel to Virginia Tech.

“We have a hard start,” Brown said. “Pitt could be ranked in the top 10 in the country. Week 4 we have to go to Blacksburg (Va.). We are playing 11 Power-5 teams, so the scheduling is challenging, so we need to have a great summer and our fall camp has to be accelerated.”

Currently, a majority of the roster are student-athletes recruited by Brown and his coaching staff, including the recent signing of JT Daniels, who started 11 games the past two seasons with defending national champion Georgia. As a freshman, Daniels started 11 games at USC. A knee injury in his sophomore year set him back one season.

“It’s going to be a process, but he is experienced and a proven starter — won the job twice at Georgia and won it at USC twice, so he is a very talented guy,” Brown said. “We need to be patient and have realistic expectations, but we are excited to get him. We have some talented quarterbacks in our program. They made big strides this spring, but we felt we needed to have an experienced guy in that room as well.

“This roster, almost every one of the players minus a couple are ones we recruited, but we have some challenging times going into Year 4. When I arrived, maybe more of a rebuild than I thought. Our players are hungry and I like how we are positioned going into the fall.”

For Plitzuweit, she hit the ground running once she was introduced as the successor to former WVU women’s basketball coach Mike Carey just more than a month ago. Stocked with impressive win totals during her six seasons at South Dakota, including a Sweet 16 appearance during this year’s NCAA women’s basketball tournament, Plitzuweit retained the services of three members from her coaching staff at South Dakota and signed four Division I transfers to go with 6-foot freshman Mari Russell from Reynoldsburg, Ohio.

Her M.O. remains to focus on an abundance of scoring to go with defensive tenacity.

“Absolutely it’s been a whirlwind,” said Plitzuweit, who coached the Coyotes to a 158-36 record (81.4 winning percentage) and four NCAA tournament appearances. “It’s certainly great to have my coaches come with me. We certainly had a great opportunity to work together and get to know each other. We have great synergy. To jump right in, we knew we had work to do.

“Recruiting girls to come to WVU, the tradition in women’s basketball is one thing with the fan base. Certainly the facilities and from an education standpoint in terms of having a number of opportunities for them. Plus you look at the conference itself. The Big 12 has given us an opportunity to get some fantastic young ladies recruited and committed.”

One transfer making the cross-country trip to play for her coach at South Dakota is 5-10 guard Kyah Watson. She was a member of last season’s team which upset No. 2 seed Baylor on the Bears’ home floor in Waco in the second round. The Coyotes were all square with No. 3 seed Michigan with 22 seconds remaining in a Sweet 16 matchup before losing 52-49.

“We had a wide-open three with 12 seconds to play and left it for the best shooter on our team, the best shooter in the conference,” Plitzuweit said. “I would take that every single day of the week.

“It was very challenging to leave South Dakota, but I really do believe there will be a lot of flying WV flags, hats and T-shirts out in South Dakota.”

As for coach Huggins, his spring activities were capped off with the April 2 announcement that after 40 seasons coaching college basketball and accumulating 916 victories he became a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame for the Class of 2022.

“When you have been in this business as long as I have, you try to take it all the right way,” Huggins said. “I look at a lot of friends of mine that have had great careers and didn’t have the opportunity to be inducted into the Hall of the Fame.

“It’s a great thing.”

WVU men’s basketball is coming off a 16-17 season — only the third time a team coached by Huggins has finished below .500. Frustration definitely set in for the coaching staff.

Huggins used the downtime to serve as studio analyst for the national broadcasts of March Madness. Without stacks and stacks of paper facts at his disposal, Huggins held his own breaking down teams in the field. Unfortunately, not qualifying for the postseason field makes you available for such job titles.

“I was really good wasn’t I?” Huggins said. “I had done it before and you know what that means? You got beat. So I never really want to do that again. Those people on the desk do a lot of studying. I’ve seen a lot of those teams, played a lot them. I had an understanding I didn’t need to have a pile of notes Seth Davis had. Seth does terrific research and gives a lot of insight to what’s going on.”

Contact Kerry Patrick at [email protected]