Huggins' Heart Tied to Calipari

SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- When West Virginia and Kentucky battle for a trip to the Final Four Saturday in the Carrier Dome, one of the more intriguing storylines will involve coaches Bob Huggins and John Calipari.

Or more specifically the time when Huggins suffered a heart attack in 2002, and while en route to the hospital, discovered one of the ambulance attendants was a nephew of Calipari's.

Huggins, then Cincinnati's coach, was headed to a coaching clinic on Sept. 28, 2002, when he suffered a massive heart attack at a car-rental office in the Pittsburgh airport.

"I had trouble breathing," Huggins told me at the 2002 Conference USA media day at the Chicago O'Hare Marriott weeks after the heart attack. "The more I tried, the worst I felt."

Huggins said he was "shocked back to life three times."



Share "I'm laying there, they scoop me up off the sidewalk and put me in the ambulance and I'm kind of in and out of consciousness," Huggins said Friday. "They're pumping morphine in you. I kind of came to and I said 'what's the ETA?'

"And he said '22 minutes.' I said 'Man, I'm not going to make 22 minutes.' You know how they tap you on the leg and say 'I haven't lost a patient?' I said 'Get ready, get ready to. I'm not some old lady, man. I know what is going on. I don't have 22 minutes.'

"And so he got on and said 'abort, abort, abort.' They went to a closer hospital, which is really right where Cal grew up. The guy in the back of the ambulance [Calipari's nephew] tapped me on the leg and he said 'Coach, don't worry. I'm not going to let you die until Cal beats you at least once.' "

Before his 2002 heart attack, Huggins had won all five meetings against Calipari. In 1993 and 1994, Huggins and Cincinnati defeated Calipari's UMass team. Then when Calipari was at Memphis, Huggins' Cincinnati teams won twice in 2001 and once in 2002.

Calipari's nephew finally got his wish on March 1, 2003, when Calipari and Memphis got their first victory against Huggins and Cincinnati, 67-48. The coaches met two more times in 2004 and 2005 with Huggins winning both meetings.

Calipari said Friday he remembers a different version of the story.

"When he had the heart attack at the Pittsburgh airport, my nephew was in the ambulance picking him up," Calipari said. "When they got him and they put him on the ambulance and he said 'Coach Huggins, you're going to be all right. I'm John Calipari's nephew.'

"And he went 'oh my goodness, I'm not going to make it.' "

So when the East Region final rolls around, it will be the ninth meeting between Huggins and Calipari and the first in five years.

They've coached against each other with Huggins at Cincinnati and Calipari at UMass and Memphis. This will be the first time Huggins has faced Calipari with the coaches at West Virginia and Kentucky.

And, of course, it will be their first meeting with a trip to the Final Four on the line.

Contact FanHouse senior writer Brett McMurphy at brettmcmurphy@gmail.com or on Twitter @Brettmcmurphy.