CLEVELAND – Bob Huggins owed one to John Calipari.The two coaches share a close bond, so after Calipari came to a fundraiser for the cancer center at West Virginia, Huggins had to repay the favor when Calipari asked him to speak at a clinic in Kentucky.Huggins went in blind, knowing only that plenty of UK fans would be in attendance. So consider his surprise when he asked Calipari what he should discuss with the crowd.”He says, ‘1-3-1, everybody wants to know how to beat the 1-3-1,’ ” Huggins said. ” ‘They know I didn’t figure it out so they want everybody to do it.’ “It hadn’t been long since West Virginia’s quirky zone defense had flummoxed UK into 4-of-32 3-point shooting and an Elite Eight loss in 2010 and the wounds were still fairly fresh. Calipari just didn’t much care.”You’ve got to have a lot of self-assurance to, you know, bring somebody in to talk about a 1-3-1,” Huggins said. “… But that’s Cal. He’s been a very dear friend.”The two dear friends will match wits again on Thursday at approximately 9:45 p.m. in Cleveland’s Quicken Loans Arena. Top-seeded Kentucky carries a perfect 36-0 mark into the Sweet 16, while Huggins’ fifth-seeded Mountaineers (25-9) are an overachieving bunch that, per usual, match the character of their coach.”I’ve always respected what he does coaching his basketball teams, how hard they play, how physical they play, how they rebound,” Calipari said.Huggins had similar respect for Calipari as a coach, praising the work he’s done to shape a group of young, talented players into the best defensive team in the country, but it’s the man he’s gotten to know away from the court Huggins really respects.”He’s more than a basketball coach,” Huggins said. “Somebody asked me what separates Cal from other coaches, and Cal and I have gone to Europe together and done a bunch of things. And I say, well, most other basketball coaches aren’t getting on a plane and read U.S. News and World Report or Money Magazine or those kind of things. Cal is a very diverse guy and I think he’s kept things, I think, in a very good perspective. He’s a great family guy, just, and he’s been a good friend.”It’s a friendship that started years ago. Huggins says the two were introduced while he was a player at West Virginia and Calipari in high school, while Calipari says it was a few years later when Huggins had recently been named head coach at Walsh College. Regardless which is true, they’ve grown close over the years, sharing similar backgrounds – Calipari grew up in Moon Township, Pa., less than 80 miles from Huggins’ hometown of Morgantown, W.Va. – and have moved through the coaching ranks since.Over the course of their careers, Huggins has an 8-2 record against Calipari, the best of any coach who has faced him at least three times. Seven of Huggins’ wins came while Calipari was at Memphis or UMass.That history has become a part of regular conversation between Calipari and Huggins, and it’s even spread to extended families, as evidenced by the pair’s favorite story.It was in 2002. Huggins was at the Pittsburgh airport when he started to sweat and experienced shortness of breath. An ambulance arrived to take him to the hospital and Huggins was in and out of consciousness as he had a heart attack. At one point when he came to, the paramedic tending to him revealed why he was taking such good care of Huggins.”So I came to and I was fairly coherent at that time and he said, ‘Coach, listen, I can’t let you die, I’m John Calipari’s cousin, and you can’t die until we beat you at least once,’ ” Huggins said. Huggins would of course live and return to coaching, and Calipari has gotten two wins against him, including one in the 2011 NCAA Tournament to avenge that 2010 defeat. But come Thursday evening, that’s irrelevant.”When you’re playing in these games, none of the past matters,” Calipari said. “Whether I was 12-0 against a coach, it doesn’t matter, this is a one-game shot.”