By Aidan Joly
When the mighty fall, it’s rarely soft.
We saw a great example of that on Saturday with the demise of Bob Huggins. A Hall of Fame coach who saw his career come to an unceremonious close after a drunk driving arrest on Friday night, not long after he was put on thin ice by West Virginia for uttering a homophobic slur on live radio.
Now, WVU is tasked with replacing a program icon who has been at the helm in Morgantown since 2007 and has been a college basketball head coach all but one year since 1984. His career ends with more than 900 wins to his name and an even larger legacy for college basketball, being a guy who always won and was always willing to give coaches and players second chances.
But, he’ll largely be remembered for how it ended, not how it went. Such is sports and such is life.
For West Virginia, there’s no real playbook here. We’ve seen jobs open up in the midst of the summer before, but the layers here certainly makes things more complicated. Still, the program needs a leader for the 2023-24 season and beyond, if it doesn’t go the interim coach route.
The West Virginia job is one of the more desirable jobs in the sport. The competitive ceiling being in the Big 12 is debatable, but finishing at .500 in that league is an accomplishment. There are lots of good things too. Being the only show in the entire state means a passionate fanbase. An organized NIL collective, one that features a guy named Jerry West as part of it – so it’s an athletic department that understands NIL and being ahead of the curve. Program success is there – there aren’t a lot of times where the Mountaineers were objectively bad in the past two decades.
It’s a good area for recruiting too – you can recruit the area in and of itself, but it’s also easy access to places like Washington D.C., New York City and Chicago.
There are and should be expectations. It’ll be interesting to see how much leeway is given to someone who isn’t named Bob Huggins.
That being said, here are eight (and one) candidates to do that.
Ron Everhart, West Virginia assistant
If WVU goes the interim route for 2023-24, it’ll nearly certainly be Everhart. He has plenty of head coaching experience – over 600 games – and has been an assistant in Morgantown since 2012. We saw the success that Rodney Terry had at Texas as an interim coach, so the powers that be might be inclined to do the same and see how it goes. At the very least, it’ll steady the ship for 2023-24.
Jerrod Calhoun, Youngstown State head coach
It might be tough to see a sitting head coach take this job, but WVU isn’t a total rebuild, considering you still have some talented players on the roster. He’s a former West Virginia assistant (2007-2012) who has orchestrated a nice rebuild at Youngstown State over the past six years and went 24-10 and 15-5 in the Horizon League this past season.
Jeff Boals, Ohio head coach
Boals has a similar pedigree to Calhoun, but has never been at West Virginia. He’s done a good job in four seasons at Ohio and took the Bobcats to the round of 32 in 2021. He’s won nearly 60% of his games as a head coach. He spent time as an assistant at Ohio State before he got head coaching gigs.
Andy Kennedy, UAB head coach
Kennedy has experience at the high major level at Ole Miss from 2006-2018 and has done a good job at UAB. However, UAB is moving up to the American Athletic for this season, so it might be tough to see him taking this job, especially with the Blazers in a position to win this season.
Alvin Brooks III, Baylor assistant
Athletic director Wren Baker doesn’t have ties to Scott Drew, but he does have ties to Grant McCasland, who was Baker’s head coach at North Texas before both left for larger schools. McCasland is a Drew apprentice, so it’s not nothing here. It could be a Jerome Tang-esque hire, going with a longtime assistant who is familiar with the Big 12. An assistant being poached wouldn’t upend a program the way a head coach leaving would, either.
Erik Martin, South Carolina State head coach
Martin only has one season as a head coach to his name and it resulted in an ugly 5-26 season at South Carolina State, 2-12 in the MEAC, last place. But, he’s a Huggins disciple who was an assistant under him from 2006-2022. It might not be what the school is looking for, but he’s worth a mention. And as tough as it is to leave in June, who isn’t leaving South Carolina State for the Big 12?
Da’Sean Butler, College Park Skyhawks assistant
Butler, who has only been in coaching since 2021, might be better-suited as an assistant. The former WVU star is currently an assistant in the NBA G League after a few months as an assistant at Wheeling University, a Division II school. Usually, that isn’t enough on a resume, but this is a different kind of search and seemingly anything could happen. He’s 35, so he can understand NIL and build relationships with players, while his star status in Morgantown would endear him to fans.
John Beilein, former West Virginia and Michigan head coach
Beilein is in a cushy advisory role for the Detroit Pistons right now, so it’ll be a question of if he wants to give that up to run a college program again. He knows West Virginia and knows it’s not a total rebuild. He’s 70 years old and hasn’t coached a college game since 2019 before a bad sting with the Cleveland Cavaliers, so he might not want to, but it could go great. If not, it doesn’t have to be a long-term commitment.
Joe Mazzulla, Boston Celtics head coach
We get to the and one guy. It won’t happen, but it’s a call you have to make. Former WVU star, rising star in the coaching ranks who got the opportunity of a lifetime to coach the Celtics at 34 years old. It went well in the regular season but he struggled in the playoffs, clearly in over his head. Still, you have to make him say no.
Prediction: I really don’t have one. On paper, Everhart as the interim coach for this season and then going from there makes the most sense. However, reports say that they are looking the full-time route now. It’s a tough situation, but it will be fascinating to see how WVU handles this.
AJ Hoops 