On Sunday, at the Charleston Civic Center in Charleston, West Virginia, the West Virginia Mountaineers beat the Marshall Thundering Herd 69-66. Why do you care? Because Marshall coach Dan D'Antoni got Bob Huggins all riled up, and the results were spectacular.
In his postgame news conference Sunday, D'Antoni insisted on keeping the MU-WVU series alive -- Huggins has proposed curtailing the series' frequency, and questioned its importance to West Virginia wholesale -- in bold terms calibrated precisely to earn a response:
"I heard suggestions for home and home. Here's my suggestion: Morgantown, Charleston. Next year Charleston, Huntington and just keep it that way," he said. "It's good for the state. If they back out now they're afraid of us. We're coming back."
And earn a response he did! On Monday, Huggins opened his call-in coach's show with a glorious 15-minute rant. In the process of pointing out Marshall's lackluster RPI over the past decade ("I don't think it's my job to support them. ...This is the fifth time in 10 years that they've been 160 in the RPI or worse..." ) and calling the idea of playing the Herd twice in a season a "travesty," Huggins pretty much laid waste to everything in his path, from D'Antoni specifically to Marshall generally. Enjoy!
"He can say I'm afraid all he wants," Huggins said. "I've probably coached 1,116 more games than he has. It's ridiculous to say something like that. We're afraid. Yeah, we're really afraid. It's crazy. We've beaten Duke. Mike's a pretty good coach. Was I afraid? I don't think I was afraid playing Duke. Played Boeheim. Used to play him every year. He's a great coach, I wasn't afraid. Why would I be afraid?
"The thing that's most laughable, and I'll get in trouble for saying it I know, but I'm to the point in my life where I really don't care. How about this? 'We're back.' That was their sixth loss [to West Virginia] in a row. 'We're back.' 'We're back' all right. Honestly it's laughable."
There are two pieces of information any attentive reader should take away from this:
He feels he's just now arrived at the point in his life where he really doesn't care, which is a frightening admission indeed, and ...
If you come at the Huggy Bear, you best not miss.