Huggins rumor

[joseph]

I really hope that this rumor about Huggins getting his roll over back this Friday is true. It seems a little fishy to me though... It may just be some ploy by the wicked witch of the East Miss Zimpher to try and do a little PR sidestep. One thing is for sure that without this rumor floating around Miss Zimpher would be stepping into a possible public shaming at this Fridays festivities. This rumor if it turns out to be such would certainly help her save some face. Instead of having about a 50/50 chance of her being booed off stage when/if she gets up. It will at least give her a little leeway for her to get on and off stage without the public emabarrasment. Fans will at least keep their booing subdued while reserving the hope that she is about to announce the extension of Huggins contract. It kinda stinks of a cunning and subversive little ploy to me, but I guess I'll just have to keep my fingers crossed that the rumor is true, and wait for another time to boo her if it's not..

[jjakq27]

It's time to clean up the Bob Huggins mess at UC. Either fire the guy outright or give him his extension and move on. They are missing out on some of the best talent ever from Cincinnati and their rivals are using it as a weapon.

The alums and season ticket holders are also balking but meanwhile the basketball program suffers while the administration does nothing.

For all of the Huggins-bashing that has gone on recently, I heard an interesting tidbit the other day. I don't know if it is true or not though. Out of all of the first-round NBA draft picks taken this year, only Jason Maxiell from UC had received his degree. So much for a program with a bad reputation for academics.

http://news.cincypost.com/apps/pbcs.dll/ar...ate=printpicart

Huggins' plight a boon for foes

Column by The Post's Lonnie Wheeler

If you listen long enough to college basketball coaches, you'll come to realize that much of what they say is couched for recruiting purposes. Much of what they do, too. Schedules. Uniforms. Styles of play.

They may not enjoy being so beholden to high schoolers, but they deal with it. They have to. It's what separates them from selling insurance.

The university president, thankfully, doesn't have to traffic at that level. She, if the case may be, can concern herself with attracting merit scholars and valedictorians, leaving the coach to worry about the power forwards.

It is imperative, nevertheless, that she equip him with the ability to effectively do that. For a program to succeed - what administrator would settle for one that doesn't? - she must arm the man responsible with facilities and a budget and, perhaps most important, a contract that will keep him on hand for approximately as long as the kids he's recruiting.

This is not to say that Nancy Zimpher of the University of Cincinnati should allow O.J. Mayo to select the school's dean of basketball. She should, however, enable her coach - who, at this stage, remains, as it should, Bob Huggins - to do his job.

Especially now that UC is in the Big East.

Especially now that Huggins is positioned for the best recruiting stretch of his marvelous and controversial career.

Huggins' current recruiting - he was reportedly in Morgantown, W.Va., Friday to watch Mayo and his spectacular North College Hill teammate, Bill Walker - is concentrated on the classes of 2006 and 2007. By 2006, if conditions don't change, he will be on the last year of his contract. By the 2007 season he will be gone, keeping alive his NCAA tournament streak under the banner of another institution.

"If it lingers for another year," said recruiting expert Clark Francis of hoopscooponline, "I think Bobby Huggins will probably go somewhere else. If he wins 22 games next year and gets visits from O.J. Mayo and Billy Walker, there will be a lot of people who want to hire him.

"O.J. and Billy Walker could walk in as freshmen (in the fall of 2007, that is; both will be juniors next year) at any school and make you a Final Four contender immediately. If I had to bet, I'd bet they would commit to Cincinnati before the end of August. They didn't end up in Cincinnati (both are West Virginia natives who played high school ball in Kentucky before moving to North College Hill) by accident.

"But if Bobby Huggins is not there," continued Francis, "I guarantee you they're not going to Cincinnati. I know for a fact that O.J. and Billy told Bob Huggins at one point that if he had taken the West Virginia job, they would have gone with him. I really think Huggins could still end up at West Virginia in two years. Or let's say the Indiana job opens up. Huggins could be the coach there and bring Mayo and Walker with him.

"O.J. and Billy make Bobby Huggins pretty hot right now. It doesn't sound like he's too much of a lame duck to me. The best way to sum it up is that Bobby Huggins needs Cincinnati less than Cincinnati needs Bobby Huggins. Because a lot of people out there want to win."

The likely fact is that Mayo and perhaps Walker will play only the one obligatory year of college basketball before turning to the NBA. Good as they indisputably are, they alone are not sufficient reason to renew Huggins' contract.

It should be renewed because he has made Cincinnati basketball what it is, and because he has little chance of perpetuating that standard with a two-season shelf life. If a Big East coach can't recruit at the Big East level, his team can't possibly play at it.

"The biggest part of it," said Dave Telep of scout.com, "is how other people are going to use it against him. Anytime there's a little bit of uncertainty, it's time for the predators to find chinks in your armor."

The dirty fighting is particularly fierce on a battleground such as Ohio, where the talent is rapidly thickening. Telep believes that the proximity factor might play to Huggins' advantage. On the other hand, the rewards may be too great to risk defending with a debilitated warrior.

"The talent in Ohio just keeps getting deeper every time you go to a national event," Telep said. "Mayo and Walker are just the headline. Then you've got a guy like Chris Wright (an aeronautical 6-7 junior from Trotwood-Madison in Dayton)."

And another like Adrion Graves, a top-100 senior guard from Hughes who is being recruited by UC, Xavier and Dayton, among others. And 6-11 Keenan Ellis, a junior classmate of Mayo and Walker at NCH. And sophomore Yancey Gates of Hughes, who has been rated as the top power forward and best Ohio player in his class. And senior shooter Jujuan Jones, who played in Sidney, Ohio, before moving to Georgia and has described UC as his leading choice. He has also remarked, however, that he wishes to play for a coach who will remain on site for his four years.

Out of state, there's 6-6 senior Duke Crews, an explosive Virginian whose suitors include both UC and Xavier. And 7-foot-1 senior Jason Bennett of Jacksonville, Fla., a high-standing prospect who has been quoted as saying that he would be a Bearcat already if Huggins had been granted his extension.

It's conceivable, of course, that another highly respected, plugged-in coach could compete for such players. There's a valid argument, also, that Huggins' recruiting advantages shouldn't supersede the best interests of the university. There are no tenable circumstances, however, by which they should be ripped from his person as he prepares to lead UC into the nation's best basketball league.

Doing so - as the situation stands - would certainly expedite the departure of Conference USA's recently named Coach of the Decade. That, in turn, would ostensibly conform with Zimpher's academic vision for the university, the catch being that visions require time to materialize as reality.

"The president may get Bobby Huggins," observed Francis, "but she's going down, too. To be successful in the Big East, now is not the time to pull the plug on Bob Huggins.

"I wouldn't want to be the president when he gets another job and takes those recruits to another school and makes the NCAA tournament five years in a row. If he gets a five-year contract tomorrow, it's over. But if Cincinnati goes down the toilet, I don't want to be the president. That's not good for your career."

Or, incidentally, for the university.