“It was pretty scary,” June said. “I really kept it together, and I think that’s because my daughter was with me. She was scared to death.”
As soon as she saw her husband, there was some relief.
“Once I got there and saw him, it was better,” June said. “You know him. He wasn’t going to act like there was anything wrong, like it wasn’t a big deal.”
Back on campus, the UC players had just finished lifting weights and were getting ready to play pick-up games. Former associate head coach Dan Peters got a phone call from athletic trainer Jayd Grossman telling him Huggins had suffered a massive heart attack.
Peters called the Bearcats into the locker room and delivered the news. The room fell silent. The players prayed together. Some were in tears. They decided not to play that day.
“It was real emotional,” Leonard Stokes said. “I started crying. I walked into a bathroom stall and just stood there. Coach Pete gave me his number and said to call him later, he’d keep me up to date.”
PHILADELPHIA
The Bearcats football team was playing at Temple University in Philadelphia. The players were just about to come onto the field for pregame warmups. Goin was standing on the sideline at Franklin Field about 20 minutes before kickoff when trainer Bill Walker walked up and handed him his cell phone. It was Grossman, telling Goin that Huggins suffered a massive heart attack. “And he didn’t know if he was going to make it,” Goin said. “It was not looking good.”
Goin hung up the phone, went to the UC locker room and told associate Athletic Director Paul Klazcak that he was leaving for Pittsburgh. Goin’s wife, Nancy, was in the stands at the football stadium. By the time Klaczak got to her, Goin was already on his way to the Philadelphia airport, led by a police escort.
He bought a ticket on a U.S. Air flight, got through security and rushed to the gate.
“I was prepared for the worst,” Goin said. “I went there with the idea that if anything happened to Bobby, I wanted to be there for June.”
Goin arrived in Pittsburgh and went right to the Medical Center, Beaver (Pennsylvania).
“When I got there, he had just been wheeled into his room after they had done the procedure,” Goin said. “He was awake when I walked in. I think only June and his brother were in the room.”
CINCINNATI
On Wednesday morning, four days after his heart attack, Huggins was taken out a back door of the Medical Center, Beaver (Pennsylvania), and transported by jet ambulance in 37 minutes to Lunken Airport in Cincinnati. He was then taken by ground ambulance to Christ Hospital, where he was in stable condition in the cardiac care unit.
Stokes had not been able to stop thinking about his coach. Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore. He just had to see him. Early Thursday morning, Stokes went to the hospital. He said there were so much media and other people around the front desk and occupying security that he just snuck past everyone and onto the elevator.
When he got to Huggins’s floor, some of the workers recognized him and said, “You’re not supposed to be here.” Stokes just kept walking “like I didn’t hear them.” He rushed to Huggins’s room, ran in and shut the door.
“We talked for like 15 minutes,” Stokes said. “Just me and him. It made me feel good because he was sitting up. He was acting like his old self, laughing and joking. He was laughing at me. He said, ‘Everybody’s always got you pictured as a saint and you snuck in!’ I felt much better just to be in contact with him.”
Several UC players visited Huggins on Friday for about an hour. “He’s ready to roll,” Peters told The Enquirer. “We’ve just got to see what the doctors say.”
Huggins was released from the hospital October 7, nine days after his heart surgery.
SHOEMAKER CENTER
Goin had already decided to do away with Midnight Madness festivities for October 2002 before Huggins had a heart attack. In its place would be “Breakfast with Bob,” the morning of UC’s first official practice.
On October 12, Bob Huggins, accompanied by June, walked onto Ed Jucker Court in Shoemaker Center to a loud standing ovation from roughly 3,200 fans.
“I just want to thank everybody for everybody’s concern,” he told the crowd. “It’s overwhelming.”
“It was amazing how many people were there and the attention they gave it,” June Huggins said. “I’m just always surprised at how many people do care. He got so many cards and letters and flowers.”
Later, Bob met with the media for the first time since his heart attack.
“If it’s your time to go, it’s your time to go,” Huggins said at his press conference. “God decided it wasn’t my time to go.”
He coached practice that day and was on the sideline for UC’s season opener, his 14th with the Bearcats.
“He wouldn’t have been happy if he didn’t (coach),” June Huggins said. “I would kind of worry about him when he’d get so fired up. Dr. (Dean) Kereiakes (Huggins’s cardiologist) said he thought everything should be OK. I wouldn’t say I think about it all the time, just once in a while when he’s really red-faced and veins are popping out. But every time he goes to the doctor, they say his heart is great.”
SILENT BUT DEADLY
Jason Maxiell showed up from Carrollton, Texas, in the fall 2001 as the pride of UC’s incoming class of newcomers. He was a first-team Class 5A all-state high school player in Texas and was a two-time district defensive player of the year. He was only six foot seven, but he had long arms, could block shots and, oh, how he could dunk.
But unlike a lot of highly touted players, Maxiell seldom said a word during practice, pick-up games, drills, wind sprints, before games, after games—you name it. Whether a teammate made a bad or good play, whether Huggins yelled and scolded, Maxiell’s facial expression rarely changed and he almost never uttered a peep.
Not that Huggins had to get on Maxiell much during practice or games, but when he did, Maxiell just listened.
“I never was one to say something back,” Maxiell said. “I feel like he’s always right. My game has advanced because I listened to him. Defense—I didn’t know anything about it until I listened to him.”
Maxiell won Conference USA’s Sixth Man Award as a freshman and was a key player on the Bearcats’ 31-4 team in 2001-02. He had plenty of teammates who spoke up on the court—and off. Ironically, it was a player who was not shy about talking back to Huggins who gave Maxiell advice his first year on campus.
“Even though Donald Little wasn’t a quiet one, he always told me to shut up and listen,” Maxiell said.
Another player who kept silent at all times was 2004 graduate Field Williams, a shooting guard from Houston.
“Field and Max are as quiet as any two guys I’ve ever been around,” former associate head coach Dan Peters said. “Those guys never say a word. It’s good to have guys like that. They’re leaders by their actions. They just keep working.
“What they do is buy into the program from Day One because they trust and they believe by what’s been done in the past. They’ve seen the success of guys we’ve had, so they just roll up their sleeves and go to work.”
Maxiell finished his career with 1,566 points and ranked 13th on the school’s all-time scoring list. Williams left with 1,030 points and as one of the most prolific three-point shooters ever in the program. He still holds the career three-point field goal percentage record (.401), and he is fourth in three-point field goals made (262) behind Deonta Vaughn and Sean Kilpatrick (313) and Darnell Burton (306).
YOU WANT IT, YOU GOT IT
Armein Kirkland felt he needed a demanding collegiate coach to improve as a player. As a senior at Lee High in Tyler, Texas, Kirkland considered playing for Bob Knight, the new coach at Texas A&M. He said he was also recruited by Nolan Richardson at Arkansas. But Cincinnati commanded his attention.
Steve Logan was lighting it up his senior year. Kirkland was attracted to the C-Paw and the fact UC wore Nike gear and was a Michael Jordan-sponsored school.
“I liked the uniforms,” he said. “As kids, that’s what you’re attracted to. I really didn’t know much about Huggs until he started recruiting me.”
Huggins was certainly the challenging coach Kirkland was looking for, but that doesn’t mean the two always got along after Kirkland’s arrival in 2002.
“I know me and Huggs bumped heads a lot,” Kirkland said. “I think he sometimes didn’t know how to relate to me. You’ve got to kind of know how you can talk to people. You can’t throw every batter the same pitch. We just bumped heads, but at the same time he saw a lot of potential in me. The approach on both of our ends was not always healthy. Our relationship probably could’ve been better. But I learned a lot.”
GETTING OFF THE BUS
UC’s 2002-03 season ended with a 74-60 loss to Gonzaga University in the first round of the NCAA Tournament in Salt Lake City, Utah. It was a game in which Huggins and radio analyst Chuck Machock were thrown out of the game.
You read that right: Machock, a former UC player and assistant coach, was tossed for repeatedly berating official Mike Kitts after he ejected Huggins, who had received two technical fouls. But the evening’s events weren’t over just yet.
On the quiet ride back to the hotel, a truck carrying Gonzaga fans pulled up next to the Bearcats’ bus and started yelling—and gesturing—at the team and Huggins.
When the bus stopped at a red light, Huggins walked off the bus and started to approach the Gonzaga fans. Assistant coach Andy Kennedy followed, as did strength and conditioning coach Scott Greenawalt. Associate head coach Dan Peters tried to keep the players on the bus.
“It was funny,” Kirkland said. “Nothing happened. Huggs said something to them. They kind of got scared. They didn’t say anything. They probably weren’t expecting to get stuck at a light with us. And you could tell by the looks on their faces they were surprised he got off the bus. I was surprised, too. They weren’t ready for that.”
CHANGE OF HEART
It was just like old times. The Bearcats, who earned a reputation as a full-court pressing defensive team in the early 1990s, were back at it early in the 2003-04 season. Cincinnati started the season 13-0 and climbed to No. 6 in the Associated Press poll.
UC was trapping opponents in the backcourt and converting turnovers into easy lay-ups and dunks. The players were smiling. The fans loved it.
The Bearcats took a 16-3 record into their February 11 home game against South Florida. The Bulls had just six scholarship players, were on an eight-game losing streak and came in with a record of 6-13, 0-8 in Conference USA.
Cincinnati won 80-67, but it was not as easy as it should have been. South Florida had numerous wide-open three-point attempts and lay-ups. It scored 46 second-half points and shot .522 from the field for the night.
Right after that game, Huggins announced: “We’ve seen the last of the press. You can’t press with guys who won’t run back on defense.”
“We had to readjust what we were doing,” Peters said. “We were really depending on getting steals and run outs and some dunks. We turned teams over, but I don’t know if we were getting any better.
“When we stopped pressing, we became a better team. We lost some games, but we became a better team. We pulled our defense back. We started guarding the ball a little better. We guarded the paint better. Our defense was better. It just took some time to adjust.”
UC lost its next two—at Wake Forest and at UAB—then won eight of its next nine games.
LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN
In 2003, Marquette won Conference USA’s regular-season title. It was the first time since the inception of the league in 1995-96 that Cincinnati did not at least share the championship.
It was up to the 2003-04 UC team to reclaim the conference.
That proved no easy task. The league was getting stronger. Rick Pitino was in his third year coaching at Louisville. John Calipari was in his fourth at Memphis. Marquette had advanced to the Final Four in 2003. UAB and DePaul were vastly improved.
No. 13 UC went into its final regular-season game—at home against No. 20 Memphis—needing a victory to share a piece of its eighth league title in nine years and clinch a first-round bye for the conference tournament.
The Tigers had won 12 of their previous 13 games.
“I can’t guarantee a victory, but we can guarantee that guys will come out and give it their best,” Tony Bobbitt told The Cincinnati Enquirer the day before the game.
It was another classic battle between the two programs.
Memphis was ahead 79-78 when senior guard Bobbitt came to the rescue—after he almost blew it. Bobbitt drove into the lane and sent a high pass out to senior guard Field Williams, who saved it from going out of bounds. Williams threw the ball inside, and another pass went out to Bobbitt in the right corner. He nailed a three-pointer to give UC a two-point lead with 36 seconds remaining.
After the Tigers missed a shot, Bobbitt got the rebound and was fouled. He made both free throws with 19.7 seconds left.
Final score: Cincinnati 83, Memphis 79.
“I just knew I wanted the ball,” Bobbitt said. “I told Coach Huggs in the huddle I wanted the ball. I wanted to show I could step up and make a big basket.
“When the shot went up, it felt good. I knew right then not only did I help myself, I helped my team and I helped the program.”
BIG-TIME TURNAROUND
On one wall in Shoemaker Center is a list of players who have been named All-America. One day before practice in the fall 2002, Bobbitt looked up and told a newspaper reporter that he wanted his name on the wall, too.
“I wanted to make an impact,” he says now.
Bobbitt, a native of Daytona Beach, Florida, came from the College of Southern Idaho as a highly touted junior college transfer who was expected to help UC right away offensively.
But Bobbitt’s Division I career did not get going the way he envisioned. In his first 17 games, he averaged just 12.3 minutes and never started. He scored in double digits only three times. His defense wasn’t up to Huggins’s standards. After missing a game with a sprained ankle, Bobbitt averaged 8.7 minutes over the next six games. He was frustrated with the limited playing time.
The day before UC played at No. 5 Louisville on February 5, Bobbitt left the team.
“Stupid move,” he said, “but that was my decision. I don’t even like to talk about it anymore. It happened. There’s nothing I can do about it.”
Bobbitt wasn’t the first player to leave the Bearcats in midseason (he wasn’t even the first that season), and he won’t be the last. After a meeting with Huggins, he was reinstated to the team. He apologized to his teammates and told The Cincinnati Post, “It will never happen again. I’m better than that. I just tried to copout the easy way.”
UC lost at Louisville 77-71. Bobbitt returned for the next game and played six minutes against Oklahoma State.
In the final seven games of the season, he averaged 11.1 points and 18.7 minutes.
During the summer of 2003, a former Bearcat stepped in and became kind of an unofficial mentor to Bobbitt. Corie Blount, who played on UC’s Final Four team in 1992, was in the weight room with Bobbitt one day and the two decided to have lunch. Blount talked to Bobbitt “about being a man and responsibilities,” Huggins said. “Corie’s been unbelievable for Tony. Tony’s been a different kid.”
“We just went to lunch and discussed some basketball things, as well as personal things,” Bobbitt said. “He was talking to me about who to be around, who not to be around, watching game film, preparing better for practice. More than basketball. He knew what I could do on the court, he just wanted to make sure I was doing the right things off the court.
“He told me the real things that I needed to hear. Corie said, ‘Don’t fight with Huggs. Act like a professional.’ Why not listen to a guy who’s been in the (NBA) making millions of dollars? It helped me a lot. I knew if I didn’t listen, it would shoot me in the butt later.”
Blount helped. T
he year of maturity and a year of experience with Huggins helped. Bobbitt’s approach to his life off the court helped.
“I let a lot of the friends I used to hang with go—friends in Cincinnati and Florida,” Bobbitt said. “I cut ties. I had to. It was hard.
“And my approach with Huggs was excellent. I think that’s one of the reasons I had a better season. He didn’t yell and I didn’t have to yell. Though he still got on me a little bit.”
Bobbitt turned things around all right.
He continued to come off the bench but was UC’s second-leading scorer at 13.4 ppg. He was third-team all-league and Conference USA’s Sixth Man Award winner. He tied a school record with eight steals against Coppin State (November 29, 2003), was most valuable player of the C-USA tournament and hit the game-winning shot with 16.1 seconds left in Cincinnati’s first-round NCAA Tournament victory over East Tennessee State.
“I think he dealt with Huggs better,” Peters said. “He just bought in to the whole thing, and you saw the results.”
END OF A SPECIAL ERA
It was no secret that University of Cincinnati President Nancy Zimpher was not a fan of Bob Huggins. Mike DeCourcy of the Sporting News reported in a 2010 article that among Zimpher’s charges by the board of trustees when she was hired in 2003 was to “do something about Huggins.” DeCourcy attributed that to former Athletic Director Bob Goin.
Zimpher’s contempt for Huggins only escalated after Huggins was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol in June 2004, an episode captured on video and aired repeatedly on national television.
Coach Bob Huggins and 2000 National Player of the Year Kenyon Martin embrace during Martin’s final home game—an 84-41 victory over St. Louis on March 4, 2000. (Photo by Lisa Ventre/University of Cincinnati)
While Huggins was not dismissed after that, Zimpher refused to renew Huggins’ contract. Late in the summer of 2005, the impasse came to a head.
Tales from the Cincinnati Bearcats Locker Room Page 20
