Huggins leaving KSU after one season to coach alma mater

Huggins was born in Morgantown, W.Va., although he grew up in Ohio. He played his last two college seasons for the Mountaineers and holds bachelor's and master's degrees from West Virginia, where he was a graduate assistant for the 1977-78 season.

Before arriving at Kansas State, Huggins coached for 16 seasons at Cincinnati, leading the Bearcats to 14 consecutive NCAA Tournaments and one Final Four. He stayed on despite a massive heart attack in 2003 -- missing only two weeks before returning to the team -- but couldn't overcome other issues.

His arrest and conviction for drunken driving in 2004 upset president Nancy Zimpher, and he was forced to resign over issues that included players' arrests, suspensions and low graduation rates.

Huggins was out of coaching for a year before he was hired at Kansas State. Had the school known he would be gone again so soon, Wefald said, he wouldn't have been the Wildcats' coach at all.

"If Bob had indicated to us about a year ago this time that he needed something in his contract about his alma mater, then we would have gone on," Wefald said. "We would have looked at somebody else."

Huggins' contract requires him to pay Kansas State $100,000 for leaving early.

Given that Beilein's paying a lot of money to leave West Virginia, Weiser said he anticipated criticism for not including a similarly hefty penalty in Huggins' contract.

"I'm sitting here and looking at a $2.5 million buyout that John Beilein had," Weiser said. "Boy, that did a lot of good, didn't it?"

Weiser also said he would not consider granting releases to Huggins' recruiting class -- considered one of the nation's best with 6-foot-9 Michael Beasley -- until a new coach has been hired.

Huggins' arrival in Manhattan last spring injected a massive dose of enthusiasm into a program that had fallen into mediocrity with the creation of the Big 12 Conference.

Bramlage Coliseum saw its first season-ticket sellout since the doors opened in 1987, and fans sported purple T-shirts reading "Welcome to Huggieville" - a play on Huggins' name and the Aggieville bar district near campus.

Those shirts now read "Welcome to Traitorville," with the "Huggie" part crossed out.

"We just started selling those about an hour ago, and we've already sold at least 10 of them," said Katelynn Hasler, a Kansas State junior working at Ballard's Sporting Goods in Aggieville.

Kansas State went 23-12 this season, two wins shy of the school single-season record for victories. The Wildcats were 10-6 in the Big 12, their best finish since the conference formed in 1996. Still, they did not make the NCAA Tournament, settling instead for a NIT bid.

At least one fan was grateful for the success.

"I can't say I didn't think it would be a tough thing for him to decide, but I think the program here at K-State is going to benefit a lot from having him around for just a year," sophomore Sam Arends said. "If that's his decision, then that's his decision."