West Virginia men’s basketball coach Bob Huggins made anti-LGBTQ comments directed at Xavier basketball fans during a recent radio appearance.
Via an audio clip from Awful Announcing, Huggins used an anti-LGBTQ slur when referring to Musketeers fans during a sitdown on the Bill Cunningham Show on 700 WLW, prompting laughter from the show’s hosts.
“I tell you what, any school that can throw rubber penises on the floor and then say they didn’t do it. By God, they can get away with anything,” Huggins said.
After one of the show’s hosts asked whether that occurred on “transgender night,” Huggins responded saying, “It was the Crosstown Shootout, what it was, was all those f--s, those Catholic f--s, they were envious they didn’t have one.”
The Crosstown Shootout is the annual college basketball rivalry game between Xavier and Cincinnati.
There was a brief pause after Huggins’s remarks, but the hosts then began laughing. Cunningham even chimed in and called the 69-year-old coach “the best.”
The comments followed a question from Cunningham, in which he asked Huggins whether West Virginia had poached any Xavier players via the transfer portal.
“Catholics don’t do that,” replied Huggins.
Huggins issued a statement Monday afternoon, in which he apologized for his comments during his radio appearance.
“... I used a completely insensitive and abhorrent phrase that there is simply no excuse for—and I won’t try to make one here. I deeply apologize to the individuals I have offended, as well as to the Xavier University community, the University of Cincinnati, and the University of West Virginia,” Huggins wrote in part of his statement.
— WVU Men's Basketball (@WVUhoops) May 8, 2023
West Virginia also issued a statement, in which the university said “the situation is under review.”
Statement by WVU Athletics. pic.twitter.com/BGGAErDU22
— WVU Sports (@WVUSports) May 8, 2023
Huggins is one of the most experienced college basketball coaches in the country, having been a head coach at four programs dating back to 1984. He was formerly the coach at Akron, Cincinnati and briefly Kansas State before landing the Mountaineers’ job in 2007.
