Texas Tech basketball: Bob Huggins’ criticism ironic; laughable

West Virginia head coach Bob Huggins had some critical remarks about the Texas Tech basketball team’s post-game celebration following the Red Raiders 62-59 win on Wednesday night.

The fact that West Virginia head coach Bob Huggins is unhappy following his team’s 62-59 loss to the Texas Tech basketball team on Wednesday night is far from a surprise.  But why the typically cantankerous future hall of fame inductee has his hackles up is somewhat odd.

Following the game, Tech posted to Twitter video of Chris Beard and his team celebrating and dancing in the visitors’ locker room after bringing home the program’s first ever win in Morgantown.  Apparently, that upset Huggins’ sensibilities to the point that he took to the airwaves to voice his displeasure.

On the radio the next day, Huggins reportedly referred to the celebration as “classless” and “bad for our game”.  Those remarks are rather ironic considering the numerous controversies that have surrounded the 65-year old.

While head coach at Cincinnati in, Huggins was the focus of a2004 NCAA investigation that found there was a “lack of institutional control” within in the program.  Soon thereafter, Huggins was forced to resign from his position by university officials despite the fact that he had built Cincinnati into one of the top programs in the nation.

"According to a 2005 piece from the Washington Post, “only 27 of the 95 players recruited by Huggins received academic degrees from Cincinnati, and the basketball team this past spring had the lowest grade-point average among the university’s intercollegiate sports teams…[and] one player had a 0.0 GPA, another would have had a 0.0 GPA if not for two incompletes.”"

What’s more, Huggins brought even more disgrace to the world of college basketball by his off-court actions.  In June of 2004, he was arrested for DUI outside of Cincinnati.

So how a man whose former employer once wrote that he  recruited  “teams that do not live up to the philosophy and vision of the University relative to student recruits as scholar athletes and positive role models” and he “continues to recruit individuals that exhibit a disregard for the law and respectful behavior. . . . [and whose] own behavior over the course of the last 16 years, both on and off the court, demonstrates an inability to model discipline and professional conduct” has the gall to criticize a team for celebrating inside their own locker room is laughable.

Certainly, Huggins has been free of such controversies in his twelve seasons at West Virginia or the two previous seasons at Kansas State.  But it is still unwise for a man with such a checkered past to make disparaging remarks about a team led by a coach who has done nothing but build his program without any hint of impropriety.

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Perhaps, Huggins was still upset about the way Wednesday’s contest played out.  He was visibly angry about not getting a call on Texas Tech’s final possession when he believed one of his players drew a charge from Jarrett Culver on a play that one West Virginia publication compared to targeting in football.

It seems all of the country roads in West Virginia seem to be leading to the same place, an incredulous state of mind over the fact that their head coach, who has made a career out of intimidating officials into making calls, did not get a whistle to go his way.  Never mind the fact that West Virginia missed 14 free throws or that Texas Tech had three players foul out.

What’s more, assuming that West Virginia would have received the call that Huggins wanted, his team would have had to hit a 3-pointer merely to tie the game.  Considering that the Mountaineers hit just 5-19 shots from behind the arc on Wednesday, odds are that Texas Tech still would have come away with the win.

But while Texas Tech basketball fans certainly take exception to Huggins’ remarks about the Red Raiders, we must admit that this is what makes college sports by far the most fun of any sport.  Only in college athletics can a man who at one time oversaw one of the most toxic and controversial programs in the nation (including having a player carry a gun on campus and an assistant coach arrested for DUI) criticize another program for dancing in the locker room.

Texas Tech’s celebration was not bad for the game but it was bad for West Virginia which has been surpassed in the conference hierarchy by the Red Raiders.  While the Mountaineers have taken a dramatic step backwards and fallen off the national map this year after losing their top two players  (Daxter Miles and Javon Carter) from last year’s Sweet 16 team, Tech has reloaded and is in nearing a top-10 ranking after losing six of last year’s top eight scorers.

The only thing from Wednesday night that was bad for the game was the 50 fouls whistled by the Big 12 officiating crew.  But when it comes to Huggins, there are times when those involved in college basketball wish he and his team would have been dancing instead of whatever they were doing at Cincinnati.