West Virginia Basketball: 10 candidates to replace Bob Huggins as head coach

Jerrod Calhoun

There aren’t a ton of options out there if West Virginia chooses to bring back a former assistant who’s familiar with the program, but Calhoun certainly fits the bill. We’re not sure if West Virginia really wants to say in the family or if they’ll hire a former Huggins underling, but he did have some successful years with the program and he’s proving himself as a head coach.

Calhoun played at Cleveland State under Rollie Massimino before serving as a student assistant under Huggins at Cincinnati. A few years later, he’d join Huggins’ staff at West Virginia before starting his own head coaching career at Fairmont State, a D2 school in West Virginia. Since 2017, Calhoun has been the head coach at Youngstown State, undertaking the difficult task of turning around a Penguins program with zero basketball history.

Considering Youngstown State just won the Horizon League regular season title, maybe Calhoun has this coaching thing worked out. He’s spent time under two of the legends of the game in Huggins and Massimino and does have over a decade of relevant head coaching experience. Clearly there’s a major jump from the Horizon League to the Big 12, but Calhoun is also very familiar with the Mountaineers program, even if his time with them was over a decade ago.