SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Bob Huggins was out of coaching for a year after being forced to resign his job at Cincinnati in September 2005 and, during that period, he figured out who his true friends were.

And from the world of coaching, there were two guys who called him often to check in on him. One was the late Skip Prosser; the other was John Calipari. For that, he will forever be grateful to both.

Both already had shown their colors a few years earlier after Huggins suffered a heart attack at Pittsburgh International Airport and was rushed to the hospital because both made time to come visit him.

That's why the NCAA tournament East Region matchup at 7:05 p.m. today between Huggins second-seeded West Virginia Mountaineers (30-6) and Calipari's top-seeded Kentucky Wildcats (35-2) at the Carrier Dome is bittersweet because both coaches would prefer not to have to play each other, especially with a trip to the Final Four on the line.

"[Calipari and I] are going to compete like crazy," Huggins said Friday at his news conference.

Huggins holds a 7-1 record against Calipari.

"When he was at Memphis, they beat us, and I went on his TV show after the game and [after we beat them once] ... and were having ribs and Cal came in with the priest from UMass and told me 'I brought the priest from UMass in for the game, and that didn't help, either.'

"We have fun, and, I think sometimes, with the modern-day coaches, they kind of get [too competitive], but John and I have never been that way, we have always been friends. John is a hell of a coach, but he's also a guy who, when coaches are down, he'll pick up the phone and call and he's always been very good about that."

Calipari, a native of Moon and a former Pitt assistant, said his relationship with Huggins goes back to the early 1980s when Huggins was head coach at Walsh College and Calipari was a young assistant working at Five Star camp just trying to work his way through the ranks.

The two had plenty in common and, over the years, became friends. It is a friendship that has grown over the past 30 years, even though they spent several seasons in Conference USA competing against each other.

One thing they share is that neither has had the luxury of being at a place like Kentucky (until this year) where they can pretty much select and recruit the best of the best players. Thus, both have had to adjust and adapt each year to whatever their personnel dictates.

"John has won with whatever he's had to work with," Huggins said. "His teams, much like my teams, they're never the same.

"We have had to get what we can get [in recruiting], and he has done a great job with that. And even now he's got great players, [but] let me say, sometimes it is harder to coach great players

"You have no idea how hard it is to take all those guys with all those big reputations and future aspirations and make them play as a team."

Calipari said the Mountaineers' run is a great example of Huggins' ability to adapt to his personnel because he has taken a lot of players with varying talent and found a way to use their strengths to create a much better team.

"Bob has looked at his team and said, 'How do we have to play in order to win,' " Calipari said.

"They're always going to rebound and be physical and bump and grind, and now he's thrown them in a 1-3-1 defense and [other zones].

"He took a piece from Denny Crum and said, "You know they are all the same size so we'll switch up,' and that takes you out of every offense you really want to run."

The two coaches spent a lot of the media sessions sharing stories about each other and, not surprising, the facts of the stories were different depending on who told it.

For instance, when Huggins had his heart attack in 2002, the paramedic in the ambulance happened to be Calipari's nephew.

According to Huggins, he told the paramedic he thought he was going to die and the response he got was, "Coach, don't worry, I'm not going to let you die until coach Cal beats you at least once."

Calipari's version?

"[The paramedic said] coach Huggins, I'm John Calipari's nephew, you are going to be all right," Calipari said. "And Bob went 'oh my goodness, I'm not going to make it.' So Bob likes to embellish that story. But, for the record, the next year we beat him by 20."

The versions might be different, but one thing is clear: they shared some laughs after that game together, as they likely will do tonight no matter which team wins.

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