Jacobs remembers Hundley before he became ‘Hot Rod’

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Decades before Jay Jacobs became West Virginia basketball’s color analyst, and long before Rod Hundley had a nickname, Jacobs saw the future phenom play in the high school state tournament.

“He wasn’t the showman then. He was just a long, lanky sophomore who could really play the game,” Jacobs said Monday, three days after “Hot Rod” Hundley died at age 80.

Jacobs grew to know Hundley in Morgantown where he attended WVU games before himself becoming a Mountaineer player after Hundley became a top NBA draft pick.

“I had that great advantage to be able to play pickup games with him and then, also, to watch him play in the Fieldhouse (for WVU),” Jacobs said.

Hot Rod Hundley made two NBA All-Star teams during a six-year career with the Minneapolis and Los Angeles Lakers.

The showmanship came later for Hundley, who became a two-time All-American at West Virginia, playing from 1955 to 1957. He spent six years in the NBA before building a career as one of the NBA’s most tenured broadcasters.

His broadcasting career, which ended in 2009, included stints in New Orleans and Utah covering a span of 35 years.

Hundley, one of only two Mountaineers basketball players to see his number retired, endured a tough childhood as an orphan in Charleston. Yet Jacobs said Hundley “felt as comfortable as he’d been in his whole life” whenever he visited West Virginia.

“He loved this state and he’d say, ‘I’ll come back for a cup of coffee,’ and that’s true. He would come back, but he’d be here for three days, he’d stay for six and you’d pick up the bill,” Jacobs joked on Monday’s edition of MetroNews “Talkline.”

Hundley had been battling Alzheimer’s before his death.

Funeral arrangements were not available as of Monday morning.





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