WVU Holds Heavy Advantage in Coaching Experience Against NCAA Opponent Morehead State

At 31 years old, Preston Spradlin was the youngest Division-I men’s basketball coach in the country when Morehead State instated him as its permanent head coach in 2017. At the same time, West Virginia coach Bob Huggins was 64 and had just led the Mountaineers to the Sweet 16 in his 23rd career NCAA tournament appearance.

Fast forward a few years and Huggins and Spradlin will coach against one another in the first round of the 2021 NCAA tournament Friday night when No. 3 seed West Virginia takes on No. 14 seed Morehead State. It will be Huggins’s 25th trip to the big dance and Spradlin’s first as a head coach.

However, Friday will not be the first time Spradlin has gone against Huggins in the national tournament, just his first as a head coach. Spradlin was a graduate assistant at the University of Kentucky when UK and WVU played in the tournament in 2010 and 2011.

Preston Spradlin (back row, third from left) as a graduate assistant on the 2010-11 Kentucky Basketball team. (Photo courtesy of University of Kentucky Athletics)

“That was a long time ago,” Spradlin said with a laugh Wednesday morning. “Obviously, my role’s changed quite a bit from being a grad assistant to a head coach. I didn’t have much input at that point in time on our gameplans or anything like that.”

The Mountaineers defeated the Wildcats in 2010 to advance to the Final Four but Kentucky got its revenge the following year. Even 11 years later, Spradlin said there are some things that have not changes about Huggins.

“The things that are going to be consistent with Coach Huggins’s team is going to be the identity,” Spradlin said. “The toughness and then tenacity that they play with. I don’t care who’s wearing those jerseys, if that man is on the sideline wearing a pullover, that’s exactly how they’re going to play.”

Huggins’s first NCAA tournament appearance came in 1986, the year Spradlin was born, when he coached Akron into a first-round matchup against No. 2 seed Michigan. The Zips only lost 70-64, but Huggins said the close loss did not make him feel optimistic afterward.

“We end up losing by [six] and really had a chance [to win],” Huggins said. “Now you go out there and you say ‘how do you ever win? How am I ever supposed to win when people have teams like that?’.”

Huggins’s next trip to the big dance ended much differently. In 1992, his third year coaching Cincinnati, Huggins and the Bearcats advanced all the way to the Final Four.

“So now you start looking around saying, ‘maybe we can do this’,” Huggins said. “I’ve had some terrible disappointments and I’ve also had some great wins that other people didn’t think were possible. When you do it as long as a lot of us have done it, you’re going to have a lot of ups and downs.”

Heading into Friday’s game, Spradlin’s mindset seems much different than what Huggins’s was for his first tournament. Spradlin said he fully believes his team can come to Indianapolis and win multiple games.

“We’ve got the recipe to come down here and win and be successful,” Spradlin said. “We are not here for the experience. We’re going to enjoy this experience, but we’re not coming down here just to say we made an NCAA tournament, we’re coming down here to play our best basketball and to win games.”

As for Huggins’s mindset heading into his 25th tournament, “I have decided in my old age I’m going to try to enjoy this as much as I possibly can. I love being around our guys and I love being around our staff. I don’t really need a whole lot more.”

WVU and MSU will tip-off at 9:50 p.m. on Friday from Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. The game will be broadcast on truTV.