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

Pat Kelsey

For as long as he stays and is successful at the College of Charleston, you’re going to keep seeing Kelsey brought up for these types of jobs. West Virginia will certainly look at all their potential options and you know they’d be excited with someone of Kelsey’s pedigree and experience.

A former point guard at Xavier, he’s a Cincinnati native who coached and learned under Skip Prosser and Chris Mack before starting his own head coaching career at Winthrop in 2012. He built great success in the Big South with those Eagles before heading to Charleston just two seasons ago. His Cougars won 31 games this past season and returned to the NCAA Tournament. He recently signed a contract extension but you have to wonder how long he’ll be satisfied in the CAA.

Kelsey has the markings of a future power conference head coach, but is West Virginia the move he wants to make? He just had his big breakthrough with Charleston and it seems unlikely that he’d bail on the program in the middle of the summer. It’s certainly possible that he could be a leading candidate if this search takes place in earnest next spring, though West Virginia might not be the only school vying for his services by then.