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As Bob Huggins Starts To Fade Away, West Virginia Looks For His Replacement

There are some intriguing candidates on this list and the others linked below

By JD King
/ new
West Virginia v Kansas
KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI - MARCH 09: Head coach Bob Huggins of the West Virginia Mountaineers screams from the bench during the Big 12 Tournament game against the Kansas Jayhawks at T-Mobile Center on March 09, 2023 in Kansas City, Missouri.
Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images

As the shocking fall of the House of Huggins starts to recede, the focus inevitably turns on who will get this job. We’re adding some links at the bottom but for now, we’re using this as a reasonable source.

A lot of people are focused on his coaching tree and that might be a mistake. Do you think that West Virginia is going to want that right now? Possibly as an interim thing, perhaps even to keep some of the transfers around. Otherwise?

Not a clean break. And West Virginia needs as clean a break as possible.

Ok, here is the list from Busting Brackets.

  • Jeff Boals - Ohio coach and West Virginia grad
  • Jerrod Calhoun - former Huggins assistant now at Youngstown State
  • Ron Everhart - current Huggins assistant, previously head coach at McNeese State, Northeastern and Duquesne. He’s also 61, which might not help.
  • John Jakus - Baylor assistant.
  • Pat Kelsey - Charleston head coach who is certainly ready to move up - if that’s what he wants.
  • Andy Kennedy -UAB coach. Also replaced Huggins at Cincinnati. He’s always seemed like a good but not great coach.
  • Chris Mack - it’s not like he’s doing anything and he had some success at Xavier. He knows the region. Let’s hope that Huggs doesn’t call him those ugly names he called Xavier students though.
  • Joe Mazzulla - Currently the head coach for the Boston Celtics, Mazzulla might be tempted, but he’s barely started his coaching career. However, he did turn in a solid two-year turn at Fairmont State, where he finished 43-17. And while that may not seem that impressive, winning 71.7 percent of the time at a D-II school is pretty impressive.
  • Ben McCollum - one of the reasons why we linked to this article is because someone else finally mentioned McCollum. This guy has done incredibly well at Northwest Missouri State. He’s been just killing it, having won four national championships since 2016-17 and keep in mind that one tournament was canceled in 2019-20 due to Covid.
  • Niko Medved - he impressed us at Furman and has done well at Colorado State. He’d probably be a reasonable choice.

By the way, if Duke is still seeking a big man, Jesse Edwards, who chose West Virginia, apparently now has a 30-day window to reconsider, as do the other transfers who committed to West Virginia with Huggins in charge.

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