As you know, I felt like a bit of a homer picking Coach Jamie Dixon as the Big East Coach of the Year. Yes it is a defensible choice, and plenty of good reason to make the call. Still when you are a Pitt partisan picking the Pitt coach in a wide open field there is a twinge.

That said, you have to love West Virginia partisans trying to explain both why Bob Huggins was deserving of consideration, and why he wasn’t.

Why deserving?

Not only did the Mountaineers lose DaSean Butler and Wellington Smith to graduation, but Devin Ebanks’ decision to forego his senior season and test the NBA’s waters left the Mountaineers with a talent void.

As if those weren’t big enough losses, incoming freshman Noah Cottrill was suspended for violating team rules and later withdrew from school while ‘Mr. Basketball’ in the state of Minnesota, Kevin Noreen, was lost to the team after suffering a leg injury that required season-ending surgery.

It didn’t stop there for Huggins, who captured his 100th victory as head coach at his alma mater when the Mountaineers scored five points in the final 8.3 seconds to beat No. 11 Louisville (72-70) on Saturday. There was sophomore Dan Jennings walking off the court during a contest and being placed on indefinite suspension while leading scorer Casey Mitchell has been in Huggins’ doghouse so much his nickname could be easily be Spot.

Even with all of that, the Mountaineers were able to post 20 wins-six against teams ranked in the Top 25-and 11 victories in a conference that could easily send 11 teams into the NCAA tournament when the field of 68 is announced on Sunday.

So it’s because the team won while having players fail in school, quit or continually getting suspended. Players Huggins recruited, no less. That’s enough?

WVU finished tied for 6th in the conference. The Hoopies were picked to finish 5th in the Big East. The only ones believing in the lack of talent were WVU writers and fans who swallowed everything from Huggins when he bemoaned how bad his team was midway through the Big East season.

And why not considered?

No doubt Lavin and Brey have done good jobs at St. John’s and Notre Dame, respectively — as has Jamie Dixon at Pitt, another seeming frontrunner for the award. The question here is, have they done a better job than Huggins?

We say no.

That leads to the question, if these other guys are rightfully deserving, and they are, why isn’t Huggins’ name even being mentioned?

Could it be something as simple as Huggins is expected to win every year, so when he does even under challenging circumstances, it isn’t big news?

Or could it be, as more than a few Mountaineer fans suspect, that WVU often gets the short-shrift from the Big East office and the Big East media.

God-bless the delusionally paranoid. They provide great entertainment.