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WASHINGTON — On the first day Bob Huggins held practice at West Virginia, he dragged a treadmill to the side of the court, plugged it in and left it there.
No one thought much about it. Treadmills and stationary bikes are commonplace for injured players who need extra workouts and still want to watch practice.
Then John Flowers messed up. No one remembers the exact infraction, but he did something Huggins didn’t like and the coach told Flowers to hit the treadmill.
“It’s on 15 miles per hour for at least 45 seconds,” Joe Alexander explained. “And you can’t hold on to anything, so if you don’t run fast enough, you just fall off.”
Everyone except Darris Nichols has hit the treadmill this season — “and he should have been,” Alexander said — punching tickets to sprint for anything from not boxing out to not listening to not playing hard enough in Huggins’ estimation.
“You’re pretty dead when you get off,” Flowers said. “Then you have to go right back into the drill, and if you mess up again, you’re back on the treadmill. But no one has been on it that much lately.”
No doubt. On the heels of its surprise run to the Big East tournament semifinal, West Virginia — a team barely on the NCAA radar as recently as February — is in the Sweet 16. Combining a second-half defensive swarm with an offensive clinic, the 7-seed Mountaineers steamrolled No. 2 seed Duke 73-67.
Less dramatic than the Mike Gansey-Kevin Pittsnogle Elite Eight dash of 2005, this West Virginia push to the second weekend of the NCAA tournament is no less unexpected. When John Beilein bolted to Michigan, he left behind a team used to playing a finesse game.
Enter Huggins, a man who has about as much finesse as John Goodman in a tutu.

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