Our Las Vegas alumni group had a great opportunity this past Friday night to host our third annual Ahearn Scholarship Fundraiser, and the guest of honor was none other than Bob Huggins! Huggins is in town to scout at the high school basketball tournaments currently in action here (Reebok's Big Time Tournament, Adidas Super 64 and Main Event tournament). Michael Beasley is playing in the Super 64 tourament, OJ Mayo and Bill Walker are in the Big Time Tournament. They all played today, although I did not attend the games I'll catch them sometime this week.
If I could sum the whole evening up in one word it would be WOW! Bob arrived, along with Brad Underwood and his wife, about 20 minutes before the event was set to begin and everyone in attendance had the opportunity to speak with the coach before he addressed the group later in the evening. In all we had about 50 attendees of the event, and Huggins was just so personable and easy to approach. He spent a little over an hour with our group and was incredibly accomodating. Yes, I was already a bit starstruck, but I really can't put into words how great Huggins made this event.
A couple of tidbits we picked up throughout the evening.
- He hasn't had a lot of time to evaluate the kids already in the program, but did note defficiencies in passing and ball handling. The player currently in the program most likely to get a lot more playing time this year than he did last year: Darren Kent.
- Scheduling will change. It's not like we did not know this, but specifically New York was mentioned as a place where he wanted to go. Wants to schedule where he recruits, which means there will be no more trips to North Dakota. When it was mentioned this would be the Wildcats first visit to North Dakota, Huggins followed up saying it would also be the last. Maui & Alaska holiday tournaments may come into play down the line.
- Talked a little about the Las Vegas Holiday Classic coming up in December. Plans are to have chartered trips out to Sin City from Manhattan. Start planning now, and if you're in California/Arizona/Utah, we'd love to see you in December. We're looking forward to not only the games, but probably having another similar event in December.
Pictures follow. We had a pretty successful auction and I managed to walk away with the Powercat Rock autograpahed by Hugs (it was autographed after the picture)! It looks great next to my Bill Snyder autographed football. Two legends, side-by-side.
