In case you haven't noticed, the man of the week in college basketball is South Carolina coach Frank Martin.
He's taken a Gamecock program that finished last in the SEC the season before he arrived to the Final Four. His story of rising from the high school junior varsity ranks - as well as asking his future wife for a first date seven times before she accepted - has been well documented this week.
And within that terrific story are numerous West Virginia ties.
Martin, for instance, left a teaching and coaching job at Booker T. Washington High in Miami, Florida, to take less money and work as an assistant at Northeastern University - under current West Virginia University assistant and Fairmont native Ronnie Everhart.
"He's always understood what makes kids tick," Everhart said. "And not just in basketball. I always knew he was going to be a great coach. I couldn't be happier for him."
The Gamecocks coach also has dished credit numerous times to WVU head coach Bob Huggins. On the NCAA podium, Martin said he was "thinking of Huggs, fighting to give me a chance."
It's no wonder. Huggins hired Martin as an assistant at Cincinnati back in 2004 from Northeastern. They've been close friends ever since.
"We talk a lot," Huggins said.
The Mountaineer coach tried to recall the start of the friendship.
"I don't know," he said. "Probably at a Nike camp when Frank was a high school coach at Miami Senior.
"It's a long story," Huggins re-started. "I went down to recruit his kids at Miami Senior and we got to be really good friends. He came up and his kids played in a tournament in Cincinnati and we kind of hung out. Then he decided he wanted to be a college coach. He got the assistant job at Northeastern when a guy got fired and Ronnie [Everhart] got the job."
"First guy I hired there," Everhart said of Martin. "Only took me five minutes to decide after meeting the guy at the Final Four. Funny thing is, after our meeting, the first guy we saw after getting off the elevator was Coach Huggins. He said, 'You need to hire this guy.'"
Huggins, it seems, has helped empower Martin every step of the way.
"I talked to Ronnie about hiring him," said the Mountaineer coach. "He worked for Ronnie and then I hired him at Cincinnati. He was there for a year with me and then when everything happened [with Huggins accepting a buyout to leave UC], he was with [Andy Kennedy, now the Ole Miss coach] in Cincinnati."
That, however, wasn't the end of the coaching relationship. In fact, the biggest boost from Huggins was yet to come.
"In 2006, he went with me to Kansas State," Huggins said. "Then, when I had the opportunity to come back here [to WVU and Morgantown], I talked them into hiring him at Kansas State. He was coming here if that didn't work at Kansas State."
You read correctly, Martin was seemingly headed to Morgantown. Yet Huggins promised to leave Manhattan without taking then-K-State players like Michael Beasley and Bill Walker to West Virginia. He only took current WVU assistant Erik Martin. He almost single-handedly guaranteed Martin would succeed in his first year.
"I did the best I could," Huggins said.
It worked.
"Some said, well, he doesn't have any experience coaching at this level," said the Mountaineer coach. "I told the [Kansas State] president and AD, he'd coached more NBA players in a year [at Miami] than I did at Cincinnati. He'd also won state championships."
Indeed, Martin coached both Udonis Haslem and Steve Blake in the mid-to-late 1990s. The coach, though, had to bounce back from high school controversy involving boosters and housing violations. He moved from Miami Senior to Booker T. Washington before starting his college climb.
Martin moved to Northeastern. Then to Cincinnati. Then to Kansas State. Then, when he had a falling out with the Wildcat administration, Martin moved to South Carolina. Understand that heading into the ongoing NCAA tourney, South Carolina hadn't won a game within the event in 44 years. They hadn't had an opportunity in 13.
Yet Martin convinced in-state stars Sindarius Thornwell and McDonald's All-America selection P.J. Dozier to sign with the Gamecocks. The rest is school history.
All the while, Huggins said, he had faith in his friend. He's not surprised at all by the recent success.
"I knew he would [be successful]," Huggins said. "Because he's good. He's good at player relations, at coaching... He's a heck of a coach. He does it all."