GNADENHUTTEN, Ohio — Thirty years later, it is hard to picture this. Thirty years is a long time for memories. It's a long time for anything that isn't geologic. Things could get mis-remembered. But here goes:

        “Bobby was a real innocent kid. He wouldn't say (spit) if he had a mouthful. He never cussed. He was real religious. He tried to convert me to Christianity all the time.”

        The speaker is Joel Cochran, now 48 years old, longtime friend of Bobby. The subject of the quote is (A) Bobby Brady (B) Mohandas K. “Bobby” Gandhi (C) Ward “Bobby” Cleaver (D) Bobby Huggins.

        The answer would be D, yes it would. Joel Cochran swears this to be true. Time has not put his memory in soft focus. He says he is not dreaming. “Bobby was not the same person he is now.”

        In 1972, Joel, Bobby and Van Henry were best friends. They cruised the boulevard in New Philadelphia, Ohio, wearing their varsity jackets, listening to the Beach Boys on the 8-track and hanging out at the Burger King, certain of their lofty places in the little world that defined them.

UC coach Bob Huggins talks with his players during Friday's game with Marquette. (Gary Landers photo) | ZOOM |

        They'd just won a state Class A basketball title. They'd gone undefeated. They'd been coached by a demanding, tyrannical genius, who also happened to be Bobby's father. After surviving Charlie Huggins, the rest of life would be strawberries in wintertime.

        As Van puts it now, “It was one of those stretches in your life when you feel invincible, like you can't be defeated.”

        Thirty years later, Bobby has dropped the “-by” from his name and won 495 games as a college coach. He cusses. This is his 13th UC team and at the moment, it is as good as any he has ever had.

        Huggins might not be the same 18-year-old kid he was. Innocent? No one who is 48 is innocent. But there is still a lot of Back Then in him. Huggins remains atop the world, too, even if the world is a different, bigger place. Any place with more than 20 people and a hardware store is bigger than the place of Huggins' youth.

        The rolling landscape of eastern Ohio is full of vague towns defined by the four-way stop signs where Main Street meets the state road, and by hardworking-class people with bedrock sensibilities. If you grew up in Midvale, you made bricks or mined coal. In Gnadenhutten, you worked at the aluminum siding plant. You went to sleep early and to church on Sunday. In between, you played basketball.

Charlie Huggins, father of University of Cincinnati coach Bob Huggins, talks about his son. (Gary Landers photo) | ZOOM |

        “I'd have been out there even if there was something else. Which there wasn't,” says Huggins.

        A lot of Huggins still can be found on the boulevard and in the hearts and minds of Van and Joel. And of course in Charlie, whose presence even now looms as both anvil and inspiration. “My dad,” Huggins says, “ran everything.”

        Start with camp. Charlie started a summer basketball camp in 1969 that's still running. Because Charlie didn't have a lot of money — and, Bob says, wouldn't admit it or spend it if he did — he enlisted family and friends to build the operation.

        Every summer for a decade, Bob worked at the camp, sometimes teaching and playing, more often working. “I was quarantined,” Bob says. “I wasn't allowed to leave.” Van and Joel came out five or six nights a week to play ball, “so I wouldn't go crazy.”

        Bob poured cement and asphalt, dug ditches, painted cabins. He was afraid of heights. Charlie didn't care. “I built roofs,” Bob says.

        When you ask him what else he did, Bob Huggins says: “You have to understand. I was at a military compound without being at a military compound. I made $25 a week, supposedly. Sometimes my dad would say I didn't put enough hours in. He'd pay me $20. I don't know how I didn't put enough hours in. I never left.”

        Charlie decreed that anyone not playing basketball would work. The choice was easy. Says Van Henry, “You would have to walk off and refuse to play us, or you would have to lose to us. We weren't leaving. We didn't feel like building things.”

A 1971 photo of Bob Huggins, playing for the Indian Valley South High School basketball team. The team won the 1972 Ohio state championship. | ZOOM |

        This is how Charlie wanted it. This is why the state title in '72 seemed to come so easily. The Indian Valley South High School Rebels never won a game by less than 16. Bob, Van and Joel played all day, every day. On Sundays after church, they played in the gym. Charlie gave them the keys. They played at camp, beating all comers, the best players in eastern Ohio. They got in shape by running 5 miles to school in their white-canvas, high-top Converse sneakers.

        “Charlie wouldn't let us wear the low-cuts,” Joel says. “No ankle support.”

        They wanted to be state champions. Bobby told them they could be. “If we work hard,” he said.

        There were things you did when you played for Charlie Huggins, and things you didn't do. You didn't date girls. You didn't talk to girls. “Girls took your mind off basketball,” explains Van. “And if your mind wasn't on basketball, you weren't helping us win.”

        Bob Huggins puts it differently. “If you lost, he didn't want anybody to make you feel good.” At school, when Charlie's players wanted to talk to girls, they'd have friends stake out the halls, in case Coach loomed nearby.

        You didn't talk back to Charlie. You didn't talk at all. You listened. “He'd rant and rave,” Joel says. “The slobber would be flyin'. But he never cussed. The worst thing he'd say was, "You're pussyfootin' around.' If we mouthed off in any way, he'd kick us off the team.”

        You practiced at least three hours, every day. You didn't swear, you didn't gesture to the refs or the opponents. You showed no emotion. You looked at Charlie when he was yelling at you. You did not get beaten on defense. Or you were sentenced to the end of the bench.

        “Charlie was driven,” says Van Henry. “His competitiveness was almost beyond normal.”

        Sound like anyone you know?

        “Charlie was Bob, without the language,” Van says. “I think Bob is driven a lot by trying to please his dad.”

        “And he'll never please him,” says Joel.

        Huggins couldn't quit his dad, even if he wanted to. In lots of ways, he is his father's son. Still, Bob fights it.

        “First time he came back, when he was coaching at Walsh College, and spoke at a clinic, he said, "I'm not my dad,' ” Charlie recalls.

        “A lot of what I do is because of things he did I didn't agree with,” Bob says. “I let my (players) communicate, because in high school we were never allowed to say anything.”

The Indian Valley South High School basketball team, 1972 Ohio state champions. Bob Huggins, rear, #34. | ZOOM |

        Charlie drove himself and his players. “I used to tell them, "If you're just as good as, you're not going to play. You'd better be better than,' ” Charlie says.

        He screamed at Bob for missing a layup in warmups. He screamed at Bob at halftime of a game in which Bob already had 29 points, for being selfish. Bob responded in the second half by passing the ball every time he touched it, then dressing quickly afterward, hoping to escape the gym before Charlie noticed.

        Charlie noticed.

        “I should kick you off the team,” Charlie said.

        “You can't,” said Bob.

        “You think you're so good I can't kick you off the team?”

        “No,” Bob said. “I quit.”

        He didn't quit, of course. He was the star. In 1972, the Rebels played in front of standing-room-only crowds. Their little home gym wasn't even at Indian Valley South High. It was down the road at Port Washington Elementary. The gym got so hot during games, the school had to install exhaust fans in the ceiling, to eliminate the moisture that would fall on the court.

        Charlie dominated things. He didn't like Bob listening to rock-n-roll music. He discouraged Bob from going to the movies. He wasn't big on Bob cruising the boulevard. “We taught them respect, responsibility, loyalty and dedication,” Charlie says now. “We taught them self-discipline, which leads to discipline the rest of your life.”

        Three-hour practices are a picnic when you're afraid of heights and your dad is ordering you up a ladder. Maybe that's where Bob Huggins' healthy work ethic comes from.

        Or this:

        “It came from everybody I was ever around as a kid. Guys would finish high school and go to the mines or the brickyard or the steel mill. They worked hard. It was just what you did.”

        He told his friends Van and Joel they'd win a state title if they worked hard. It happened the way he said it would.

        The night after they won it all, Bobby, Joel and Van went their separate ways. Each hopped in a car, each with his girlfriend, and drove the two-lane blue highways of home. None knew where the others would be that night. Eventually, they all arrived at the same, secluded spot. “That's how close we all were,” says Joel.

        At least that's how Joel remembers it. Bobby has no such memory. “I didn't have a car,” he says.

        Who's to say how it really was? Thirty years is a long time. Kids don't hang out at the Burger King now; there's a mall up the road.

        But Bobby Huggins is still selling the gospel of hard work. Still doing a lot of what Charlie taught him. It seems to be working. Regardless, it beats climbing ladders.

        Contact Paul Daugherty at 768-8454; fax: 768-8550; e-mail: pdaugherty@enquirer.com.
       

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