This year’s class for the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame has quite a regional flavor.
Among the 13 inductees announced Friday were West Virginia University alum and coach Bob Huggins, Penn Hills native George Karl and former McKeesport star Swin Cash.
The trio with local ties will join former NBA stars Manu Ginobili and Tim Hardaway along with eight others who will be enshrined during festivities Sept. 9-10 in Springfield, Mass.
Huggins’ 844 coaching victories ranks eighth all-time; his 1,218 games coached ranks sixth. The 69-year-old has coached WVU the past 15 seasons in addition to 22 other seasons at Akron, Cincinnati and Kansas State. Twice, Huggins has led teams to the Final Four.
A 1969 graduate of Penn Hills High School, Karl’s coaching career spanned nearly four decades, including as 1,999 games (seventh-most all-time) as head coach of six NBA teams – Cleveland, Golden State, Seattle, Milwaukee, Denver and Sacramento. Karl, who played in college at North Carolina and led the SuperSonics to the 1994 NBA Finals, accumulated 1,175 wins, sixth-most in NBA history.
The 42-year-old Cash starred for two national championship-winning teams at UConn, winning Most Outstanding Player honors for the 2002 NCAA Tournament. She also won three WNBA championships and was a four-time league all-star who was a member of the WNBA’s 25th anniversary team named in 2021.
