Bob Huggins Inducted Into Basketball Hall of Fame
Morgantown’s hometown boy, Bob Huggins, is now a Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famer.
The West Virginia head coach, a native of Morgantown and a graduate of West Virginia University, was the latest Mountaineer basketball player or coach to be inducted into the game’s highest honor on Saturday night in Springfield, Mass.
Huggins has a 916-399 record as a head coach, dating back to his first job at Walsh College in Ohio in the early 1980s. He achieved his greatest fame as a coach with Cincinnati, spent a season with Kansas State and then left the Wildcats to return to his alma mater when John Beilein left for the University of Michigan.
It allowed Huggins, a former Mountaineers player and graduate assistant coach, to bring his career full circle. Since his return, he’s led the Mountaineers to a Final Four in 2010, a transition from the Big East to the Big 12 Conference and generated millions in donations for his charity, the Norma Rae Huggins Cancer Endowment Fund, named for his late mother.
His mother was foremost on his mind, even before the ceremony. So were the many members of Mountaineers Nation, the ones for which he wants to bring a NCAA championship home.
Huggins was presented for induction by two former West Virginia players that are already in the Hall of Fame — Los Angeles Lakers legend Jerry West and long-time NBA executive Rod Thorn. Both have the same number (44) retired at WVU Coliseum.
Huggins was all smiles when he arrived for the ceremony.
Huggins is one of the most decorated coaches in college basketball history. Last season, he passed Bob Knight and Roy Williams on the all-time list and now has 916 career victories.
He is one of six Division I coaches to win at least 900 games, along with Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim, Jim Calhoun, Knight and Williams. Boeheim are the only other active coach.
Entering last season, Huggins was the only of the of six coaches with at least 900 career wins that wasn’t in the Hall of Fame. He is signed with the Mountaineers through after the 2026-27 season.
Huggins took Cincinnati (1992) and West Virginia (2010) to the Final Four in his long coaching career, which started his career at Division III Walsh, where he won 71 games in three seasons from 1980-83. Akron hired him, and in five seasons Huggins won 97 games and took the Zips to the NCAA Tournament.
At Cincinnati, Huggins helmed the program for 17 seasons, won 399 games, and reached the NCAA Tournament 14 games. After a season out of basketball, Huggins took the job at Kansas State in 2006 and led the Wildcats to a 23-win season before the West Virginia job opened up and he took it before the 2007-08 season.
Huggins has a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree from WVU. Huggins and Williams are the only two coaches to win at least 300 games at two different schools.
You can find Matthew Postins on Twitter @PostinsPostcard.
