Bob Huggins asserted on Monday that he had by no means resigned because the West Virginia males’s basketball trainer after being arrested and charged with using beneath the affect ultimate month, opposite to a observation launched through the college, and that he anticipated to be reinstated after finishing a voluntary rehabilitation program.
In a observation on Monday, Huggins stated {that a} college announcement of his resignation on June 17 used to be false, and that he “did not draft or review WVU’s statement.” Huggins stated he had now not signed it, and due to this fact by no means resigned in step with the employment settlement in his contract. One week after his introduced resignation, the college named an intervening time substitute.
He stated he were in a rehabilitation middle that he used to be making plans to stick in “until I am cleared to return to my active coaching duties,” and he apologized for “the mistake that I made in Pittsburgh,” relating to his arrest. Huggins’ observation used to be first received through West Virginia MetroNews.
The observation got here after David A. Campbell, a attorney for Huggins, had despatched a letter to the college’s president. In the letter, first reported through West Virginia MetroNews, Campbell wrote that the college had introduced Huggins’ resignation in accordance with an electronic mail despatched through his spouse, and that the e-mail would now not qualify as a resignation pursuant to Huggins’ employment settlement. That, Campbell stated, required a observation “in writing via registered or certified mail.”
Addressing a next letter from Campbell, Stephanie Taylor, a attorney for the college, expressed confusion over whether or not Campbell used to be announcing Huggins had by no means resigned — in addition to over the state of Huggins’s prison illustration.
In a letter, received and reviewed through The New York Times, Taylor wrote that every other attorney for Huggins, James Gianola, had “indicated to the university that Mr. Huggins had decided to resign and retire” on June 17. In response, the university told Gianola that it needed Huggins’s resignation in writing, according to Taylor.
Taylor said that Gianola then asked the university if it would accept his resignation in the form of an email from his wife, June Huggins, since Bob Huggins didn’t use email and Gianola was “having IT problems.”
In an email to The Times on Monday, a spokeswoman said the university had no response to Huggins’ statement beyond what it had already said. Gianola did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
On June 24, the university announced that Josh Eilert, who was on West Virginia’s staff for 16 seasons under Huggins, would serve as the interim coach for the 2023–24 season, after which the university would conduct a national search.
Huggins’ job was in jeopardy before his arrest. Huggins was suspended in May for using a homophobic slur twice and for mocking Catholics during a live radio interview two days earlier. In response, the university docked his pay by $1 million from $4.15 million per year, required him to undergo sensitivity training and suspended him for the first three games of the 2023-24 season.
Huggins, 69, amassed 863 wins in 38 seasons as the head coach at Akron, Cincinnati, Kansas State and West Virginia, ranking eighth on the men’s Division I career wins list. Inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2022, Huggins had the most victories among active coaches when West Virginia announced his departure.