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Huggins has had conference tourney success

Photo by Nick Krug for The Inter-Mountain WVU coach Bob Huggins berates an official during a recent game against Kansas.

KANSAS CITY — On Wednesday afternoon, while talking to reporters outside the team locker room at the Sprint Center, Bob Huggins let out a little secret to the success he has enjoyed in conference tournaments through the years.

“Good players,” he shrugged.

WVU will take on Baylor in a Big 12 Tournament quarterfinal at 9 p.m. today. The game will be televised on ESPN2.

Good players led to an Ohio Valley Conference championship when he was at Akron in 1986. Good players resulted in eight conference championships when he was at Cincinnati — four when the Bearcats were in the Great Midwest and four when the Great Midwest morphed into Conference USA.

He also had good players when West Virginia won the Big East Tournament championship in 2010, and he’s had good players the last two years when the Mountaineers came up a little bit short here at the Sprint Center in 2016 against Kansas and in 2017 against Iowa State.

Sure, having good players is certainly a big part of winning championships, no question. But good players also lose, too. That’s where establishing a culture of winning really takes hold when the calendar flips to March and a loss means the end to your season.

“I’ve been blessed with guys that are extremely competitive who hate to lose,” Huggins said.

Earlier this week, Texas coach Shaka Smart talked about his team needing to put winning basketball games above any personal agendas his players may have.

That’s something Huggins preaches to his teams every single day from the moment the basketballs are rolled out in October.

He wants selfless guys who place the good of the team above their own personal ambitions and when he’s got a bunch of them like Jevon Carter, Da’Sean Butler or Kevin Jones since he’s been at West Virginia, or Nick Van Exel, Kenyon Martin and all those great players he had at Cincinnati, it means your team is usually hoisting banners at the beginning of the next season.

“We’re blessed because we’ve got a guy who can certainly score a lot more points, and he just wants to win — JC just wants to win,” Huggins said. “He’s been incredible in the huddle, and I think he has been the epitome of selfless.”

“You’ve got to play a lot for your team and not for yourself,” Carter explained. “If we’re all going toward one goal that shouldn’t be hard. You’ve just got to let them know when you win everybody shines, and if you loses nobody shines.”

— John Antonik, wvusports.com

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