Any doubts about the Calipari-Huggins bond were settled only a while after Calipari accepted Kentucky’s rich job offer Wednesday.

 Sometime not long after he had made his decision to leave Memphis and head to Lexington, Ky., to become the next basketball coach at the University of Kentucky, John Calipari picked up his cell phone and dialed one of his closest friends in coaching.

“Am I crazy?” John Calipari asked Bob Huggins.

“No,” the West Virginia University coach answered. “You’ll win a national championship there.”

The path there could feature WVU as an obstacle. Huggins said yesterday he’d like to have Kentucky on his schedule in the future.

It just makes sense. Never mind the relationship between Huggins and Calipari, though that helps. A lot. The proximity of the states is big. The SEC-Big East component matters for TV. There’s even history between the schools — the famous Kentucky Invitational in the late 50s and early 60s, the Wildcats in the third game in Coliseum history.

Maybe that doesn’t happen this year, since scheduling is such a tricky task and sometimes requires a year or more notice to get things together. An option may still reside in the SEC.

With the Memphis possibility vanishing, WVU will look elsewhere to bolster its non-conference schedule, which includes Ole Miss at home, plus the 76 Classic in Anaheim, Calif.  UCLA, Texas A&M, Butler, Minnesota and Clemson are in the eight-team field.

Huggins said the University of Florida, a team he’s never played, is a possibility.

“We’re talking about it,” Huggins said. “I think it’s a matter of working out the game when there’s a window for it.”

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