Bob Huggins opens up on his personal experiences with cancer treatments, desire to create more resources
West Virginia coach Bob Huggins opened up about his personal experience with cancer this week. Huggins detailed raising money with his “Fish Fry” benefit every year in honor of his mother.
“What I’m told was $2 million or more,” Huggins said of the money that was raised at this year’s event. “So I haven’t got I haven’t got the figures yet, but I just, I just talked to Debbie and (it looks like it’s over $2 million).”
Huggins opened up about opening a cancer treatment center in West Virginia when it’s all said and done.
“That’s why we do it,” Huggins said. “Again, I lost my mother to cancer and to sit there by her bedside and see my mother struggle through months of cancer was a really, really rough thing. You know, you just obviously, you feel bad for all the people who have loved ones going through that.
“And, you know, I just thought, you know, anything that we could do to help I think would be time well spent. You know, I think we have a great need for it here in this state.”
The ultimate goal of the money raised it to build a center in-state. Rather than have residents go all the way up to Boston, as Huggins said, or elsewhere, they should get the best treatment locally.
“You know, my goal is to build a state of the art cancer center here on campus,” Huggins said. “At the university, Here in Morgantown, where West Virginia people don’t have to worry about going to Boston or going all over the place to be treated.
“They can be treated right here and have state of the art equipment, state of the art doctors that can give our people the best treatment or as good a treatment as you can get anywhere in the country.”
West Virginia and Huggins return to the court Saturday at 8:00 p.m. ET when the team hosts Oklahoma. The last time the two teams played each other was a Sooners win Jan. 14.
The Mountaineers lost by a point so they’ll certainly want a bounce back win after a loss to No. 15 TCU earlier this week.
Huggins and the Mountaineers (13-9) are 3-3 in their last six games.