Round Two: Some coaches will yell

As I cross the T-minus two months threshold on my retirement countdown and take stock of these last 40 years in journalism, a common denominator is emerging: It’s the things that happened outside the lines and never saw the light of day in a newspaper that stand out most to me, behinds-the-scenes stuff that I’ll take with me into the sunset.

One of those moments happened at the dawn of my career, back when I was the University of Akron men’s basketball beat writer for the campus newspaper, The Buchtelite. The Zips had just finished playing a preseason exhibition game at James A. Rhodes Arena, and since I was the only media covering the game, I was told that I would be able to interview Akron head coach Bob Huggins one-on-one afterward.

I had never interviewed the future Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famer prior to this night. In fact, I had never even met him. I would be doing a season preview interview with him at some point, but it would be closer to the start of the regular season. So I was working without a net on this November night in 1988.

I knew all about Huggins, of course. He had coached Walsh College to a perfect 30-0 regular season in 1982-83 and had taken the Zips to their first NCAA Tournament — and nearly beaten Michigan in the first round — in the 1985-86 season. He was a rising star in college basketball’s coaching ranks.

I also knew he had a reputation for being a bit on the fiery side, which had been on display from time to time during the exhibition game. But Bob Huggins wasn’t the first coach to get a little riled up in the heat of battle, so I didn’t think much about it as I walked down the hallway toward the Zips’ locker room in the bowels of Rhodes Arena after the game.

That all changed as soon as I reached the locker room and heard Huggins going volcanic on his team on the other side of the closed door. Time has clouded my memory on whether the Zips won or lost this game, but you don’t forget your first Huggy Bear meltdown. Win or lose, Huggins clearly wasn’t thrilled about something — or anything — that had transpired during the game.

As I stood outside the door listening to the eruption of Mount Huggins, it occurred to me that maybe getting some comments from him for my story wasn’t really all that important. I mean, I saw the game, I had all the stats, I had plenty of information to write my gamer. Walking away now would save me from being collateral damage in the locker room later.

Suddenly, though, it got quiet for a few moments, then the door swung open. It was an assistant coach, or at least someone who looked like an assistant coach. I introduced myself and asked if I could interview Coach Huggins for a couple minutes. “Sure,” the guy said. I thanked him and stood there, thinking he would go back into the locker room and have Huggins come out to the hallway.

Instead, the guy said, “Oh, you can just talk to Coach in the locker room. He’s over in the corner.”

This was exactly what I was hoping to avoid: me coming within striking distance of Huggins inside that locker room. Trapped. At least the hallway had escape routes.

I stepped inside. An entire college basketball team was in the room — players, coaches, support personnel — and it was silent. Locker rooms are supposed to be cacophonies of sound: loud music, loud voices, loud banging and clanging of locker doors. But this one was more like the morgue at midnight. Some of the Zips players sat on benches staring down at their shoe tops. Others wore blank, almost stunned, expressions, seemingly afraid to make a sound or move a muscle with Huggins still in the room. It was eerily, disturbingly quiet.

This was the awkward post-battle carnage that greeted me as I gingerly entered the room. Naturally, every head snapped in my direction with that “who the hell is this guy?” look as I made my way in, wishing I could turn around and walk right back out. And that’s when I spotted Huggins, standing in a corner — as advertised — holding court with a couple assistants. Great. I would have to interrupt those proceedings to interview Huggins. He’s going to love this, I thought.

As I approached, Huggins looked like a giant. He went about 6'3 or 6'4, and he had the body frame of a tight end. Add an inch or two of height with his shoes, and he cut an imposing figure in a room already cowed by his explosion just a few minutes earlier.

When I reached him, I was keenly aware of the fact that I seemed to be staring straight up to talk to him. I summoned the courage to introduce myself, we shook hands, and he proceeded to calmly answer my questions for a good five minutes, treating the interview like Dick Vitale himself was asking the questions. Huggins had transitioned from Mr. Hyde back to Dr. Jekyll almost in front of my eyes.

He was matter-of-fact and composed in that interview, and he remained that way for all of our interviews throughout that 1988-89 season, which ended with the Zips giving Ohio State a battle in the first round of the NIT before falling at St. John Arena (a game I covered, which checked off an early bucket list item for me). Over the course of that season, I routinely met with Huggins in his office at Rhodes Arena to do update stories on the Zips and he was always pleasant and accommodating, with these interviews evolving from question-and-answer sessions to two guys just talking basketball.

Huggins always made time for these interviews, and he never acted like he was doing me a big favor. I remember one day in particular late in the season when his office phone kept ringing every few minutes; Huggins, a little on edge that day, would answer and talk to the person on the other end right in front of me. “Uh-huh,” Huggins would say into the receiver. “Uh-huh. What did you hear? Well, let me know.” And he’d hang up.

After about the third or fourth time of this, Huggins hung up and said, “Sorry Tom, I’m up to my ass in alligators today. We’re trying to see if we have a chance to make the NCAA Tournament.” The Zips, a basketball independent back then, ultimately were NIT-bound that season, but it was a rare opportunity to be in the inner sanctum while those discussions were taking place.

Even sitting behind his desk, though, Huggins had a presence that commanded a room, the early stages of a larger-than-life personality that carried him to a legendary coaching career that sadly had an unspectacular and unflattering ending. I never spoke with Huggins again after he left Akron for the University of Cincinnati after that 1988-89 season, but I watched his career with interest and wasn’t at all surprised at his success.

And it was at some point during his years after Akron, as I watched him win everywhere he went, that I realized what Huggins had really done in that Rhodes Arena locker room back in 1988. It was the preseason. It was a game that didn’t matter. It was a game that nobody was going to remember (me included). The perfect time for a coach to light a fire under his team and set the tone for the rest of the season.

Huggins was building culture, and he was raising expectations. He didn’t go all Krakatoa on his players that night because of how they played in an exhibition game, he did it because of how they would have to play against a rugged independent schedule with the NCAA carrot dangling at the end of the season.

And judging by the Zips’ 21-win season and NIT appearance that year, Huggins’ shock-and-awe routine got the attention of every college kid sitting inside that locker room.

And one standing outside it.