Seated a few feet away from WVU basketball coach Bob Huggins at Mountaineer Madness Oct. 16 was Jarrod West, the former Mountaineers guard who famously hit a buzzer-beating 3-pointer against Cincinnati in 1998 to give WVU back-to-back NCAA Tournament wins for the first time in nearly 40 years. As has been the case ever since that fateful desperation show banked its way into the basket, West was crowded by ‘Eer fans who wanted to relive the moment.
The coach of that Cincy team, of course, was none other than Huggins, who couldn’t help but to hear the chatter.
“I could kind of hear him grumbling about it,” says West, now the boys basketball coach at Notre Dame High School in Clarksburg, W.V. “I got to talk to him for the first time. It was a little awkward because he’s a competitor and that’s one that kind of slipped away from him.”
West, a native of Natchez, Miss., who averaged 10.6 points and four assists as the starting point guard for that memorable team, is predictably remembered for ‘The Shot’ throughout the state. Rarely does a day go by when he doesn’t hear mention of it.
“My wife and I were deciding where to live, and she said, ‘You’re only famous in two places -- Mississippi and West Virginia, and you’re more famous in West Virginia,” says West. “It doesn’t [get tiresome talking about it]. I used to enjoy it a lot when I first got out of school and then after about four or five years I got a little bit tired of it. But now as I get older and my kids get older, I appreciate it even more.
Cincinnati had hit a 3-pointer of its own to claim a one-point lead with seven seconds remaining when West drove the length of the court and launched a shot from the top of the key. The ball caromed off of the backboard and through the net, sending waves of pure euphoria coursing through the veins of the 5-11 senior.
It’s one of those moments of which most fans can recall precisely where when it happened and how they celebrated. West’s family, for instance, was in a church in Mississippi; he was supposed to be his brother’s best man that day.
“I always tell people, I wish everyone could experience that feeling one time. It’s like an out-of-body experience. All of the adrenaline, you can’t control yourself. Every time I see the replay, I get goosebumps,” West says.
West’s sons -- Jarrod, 10, and Jaidyn, 6 -- are beginning to understand why the father seems to be everyone’s long-lost best friend in the state of West Virginia. The elder of the two siblings couldn’t understand why the cameras kept pointing toward him as they watched WVU play Pittsburgh last year on a day the school welcomed back the ‘98 team, which fell three points short of Utah in nearly advancing to the Elite Eight as an unheralded No. 10 seed.
“I let him listen to the Tony Caridi [play-by-play] of the shot. As he gets older he kind of knows who dad was. Hopefully I’ve got two future Mountaineers. If you’d hear them talk, you’d think they’d already signed the scholarship papers. My oldest is definitely a future point guard. He lives and breathes basketball. Jaidyn has more of scorer’s mentality,” West says, chuckling.
West keeps up with many of his former teammates, such as Damian Owens, Greg Jones, Adrian Pledger and Brett Solheim, and is ecstatic about watching this year’s club, which he feels is a legitimate national title contender. But not everything related to WVU hoops elicits such positive feelings.
In 2007 West wrote a book, “Growing Up on the Hardwood,” that focused largely on Gale Catlett, the longtime Mounties coach. Among other things, West says Catlett slapped him during a practice, lied to him as a recruit and made no effort to help the players from that '98 team gain professional basketball opportunities.
West hasn’t shied from talking about those issues, and he was hoping to speak with Catlett when the team was invited for the reunion.
“I heard he was going to be on with Tony Caridi and talk about it. But he didn’t show up. The whole team knew he wasn’t going to show up. How many places would you have a reunion for a Sweet 16 team, and the coach doesn’t show up?” he says.
“I wrote the book to help young guys who are coming up understand that it is a business and things like this happen. It helped me move on and mature in my life to get it off of my chest. It was a situation where I don’t feel like any of us were given the opportunity to get to the next level. You’re friends with Rod Thorn and Jerry West, all you have to do is make a phone call to see if they’ll invite your guys to camp who gave blood, sweat and tears for you for four years,” he says.
“For every 10 people, nine of them kind of knew stuff like that was going on. I wasn’t worried about the backlash, because it’s the truth,’ he continues. “All you have to do is pick up the phone, and you do nothing?”
Though not afraid to talk about his experiences, West says he has moved on and has nothing but good feelings when in Morgantown.
“Of course I miss playing, everybody misses playing, but the two things I miss the most are running on that carpet during starting lineups and just being with my teammates. The locker room, just hanging out with the fellas.”
West chatted with some of WVU’s current players while at Mountaineer Madness.
“I told Truck and those guys, enjoy it, because it goes fast. And once it’s gone, it’s gone forever,” he says.
In other words: savor the moment. Which is a fitting message, coming from someone who authored a moment that WVU fans will forever savor.