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Now all Gillispie needs is one of the tour busses like Smith had in Minnesota.
“I’m looking forward to meeting every single person in Kentucky if I get a chance to,” he said.
Well, he shouldn’t expect a welcome mat in Louisville.
Beilein, who paid $1.5 million to West Virginia for taking the job at Michigan with five years remaining on his deal, said those same fans who are happy now with a fresh face and a new voice could be the same ones setting up firecoach.com Web sites when the wins don’t come as quickly as they’d like.
“People who have won national championships before, I think their patience line might be different,” he said.
Smith knows all about coaching under the weight of impatient fans. He won’t get that in Minnesota where the Gophers went 9-22 last season and suffered through the academic fraud scandal under Clem Haskins and only one NCAA tournament in seven-plus seasons under Don Monson. There are no immediate Big Ten title expectations for now.
“I think they’re a little more realistic than that, coming off the year we had,” Smith said. “They did win nine games. They have some solid kids returning.”
Huggins is enjoying a happy homecoming in his return to West Virginia. He was a former captain and two-time academic All-American during his 1975-1977 playing days, and spent the first year of his coaching career with the Mountaineers as a graduate assistant.
Huggins is finding it easy to reconnect with old friends and fans.
“I was there for five years, so you take four years on either side and it’s like 13 years of people you went to school with,” Huggins said.
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