Bob Huggins' offense runs through senior guard Jevon Carter. When John Calipari needs a basket, I suppose his offense runs through leading scorer Kevin Knox.
 
The Huggins-Calipari friendship? That ran through Joe Fryz.
 
Everybody today knows Calipari, the Hall of Fame coach, and Huggins, the soon-to-be Hall of Fame coach.
 
But not everybody is familiar with the name Joe Fryz, who died this past summer following a two-year battle with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.
 
Fryz was one of the most coveted players in Western Pennsylvania during his senior year at Moon High in Coraopolis in 1976 when he averaged 27 points per game to earn a spot on the Pennsylvania all-state team.
 
Back then, Pitt had Moon High's top basketball recruits on lockdown.
 
Tom Richards, who once scored 63 points in a game against Beaver High in 1972, established Pitt's presence at Moon High, and Fryz was naturally the next one expected to follow Richards to Pitt's Fitzgerald Field House.
 
Sam Sciullo Jr., whose father Sam Sciullo Sr. was once a prominent Pitt booster, recalled Pitt coach Tim Grgurich rolling out the red carpet for Joe one winter day.
 
"Tim Grgurich was in our home many times when I was growing up, and we would host recruiting parties, dinners and brunches," Sam recalled recently. "I distinctly remember Joe Fryz coming to our house for breakfast with Grgurich, and we were very impressed with him. Even then you could see that he was very mature and very poised for his age."
 
Everyone assumed that Fryz was going to wind up at Pitt just as Richards did four years prior. But Joe decided to take a trip down to Morgantown to look around and see something different. There he met Bob Huggins, then a junior on the Mountaineer basketball team.
 
As Huggins tells the story, Fryz's official visit took place during finals week and hardly any students were around town. Huggs was put in charge of showing him the campus so he took him down to former WVU football player Bernie Kirchner's place, The Dungeon, on High Street.
 
Huggins, teammate Mo Robinson and Fryz ended up hanging out together at The Dungeon playing on a bowling machine for the rest of the night. Huggins, as he was apt to do even then, made a big impression on Fryz. It was the first of many recruiting victories for Huggs.
 
Joe liked the laid-back, relaxed atmosphere at West Virginia a little bit better than Pitt, and because Morgantown was a lot closer than Maryland, Florida, Duke or Oklahoma State, he chose West Virginia so his parents and younger sister, Debbie, could see him play.
 
His sister loved it here so much that she decided to make Morgantown her permanent home.
 
Grgurich, meanwhile, was so upset with Joe's decision to go to WVU that he never talked to him again - ever.
 
"A couple of times, we'd bump into each other when we played Pitt as the teams were leaving the floor, and he would never say anything to me," Fryz recalled in 2008. "Then, I saw him at an NBA game (in 1998) and I said hello to him and he didn't even acknowledge me."

Fryz wound up having a nice career at West Virginia, averaging 10.7 points per game during his senior season in 1980.
 
If Huggins could be considered Fryz's big brother, Joe's little brother was Calipari, a sophomore guard on Moon High's team when Fryz was a senior.
 
Calipari hardly played when Fryz was tearing it up as a senior, and Fryz hardly played when Huggins was performing at West Virginia during his senior year in 1977. But a bond soon formed between all three basketball guys when they got together. It strengthened once Calipari got into coaching after he was finished playing at Division II Clarion University.

"Obviously, I'm older than what Cal is, but I'd see him at Five-Star (camp), and we'd spend some time together," Huggins said Thursday morning. "We'd spend time on the road. We've done seemingly hundreds of charity events together. We've had a great relationship since the 70s."
 
On Friday night, the Huggins-Calipari friendship is going to benefit countless cancer patients throughout the area when they get together to tell a few stories and raise some money for the Norma Mae Huggins Cancer Research Endowment Fund out at the Mylan Park Community Center.
 
Huggins' annual Fish Fry, presented this year by Little General Stores, has become one of the premier philanthropic events in the area, mixing sports, celebrity, entertainment and high society in a casual, friendly atmosphere not much different than what Joe Fryz once experienced at Bernie Kirchner's place down on High Street.
 
The ESPN College GameDay gang will be there. Live entertainment is planned. Calipari will be stopping by once his Kentucky team is finished practicing. There won't be an empty seat in the place.
 
Calipari has already signed 200 basketballs to be auctioned off for $200 each. Huggins has signed 200 more.
 
"I finally had to call and tell him, 'No more balls. I'm missing practice to sign all your basketballs," Calipari told Pittsburgh Post-Gazette columnist Ron Cook earlier this week.

To Huggins, 200 is hardly any, especially when it's for such a good cause.
 
You can bet there will also be some Seth Greenberg, Jay Bilas and Jay Williams signed basketballs floating around there for auction as well!
 
Whatever Huggins can do to add to the $1.35 million he's already raised for the Cancer Center he'll do.
 
For those of you who can't make this year's event, you can watch it live on Nexstar affiliates statewide beginning at 7 p.m. The Hagerstown, Maryland affiliate will air it beginning at 8 p.m.
 
This will be Calipari's first trip back to Morgantown since his top-ranked UMass Minutemen sent 13,862 Mountaineer fans into deep depression when they came back from 18 points down with four minutes remaining to defeat West Virginia, 97-94, in overtime on Jan. 27, 1995.
 
That game will likely be on many people's minds when Calipari walks into Mylan Park Community Center Friday evening.
 
Others will likely be thinking about the big game against Calipari's Kentucky Wildcats on Saturday night. It will be the 12^th time Huggins and Calipari have coached against each other, Huggins winning eight and Calipari claiming three.
 
This will be the first time in a long while that the losing team will have another game to play afterward. Twice since 2010, Calipari has ended Huggins' season and once Huggins ended Calipari's season one game short of the Final Four.
 
Many will certainly be thinking about that one on Friday night as well.
 
My thoughts will be with Joe Fryz, the guy who first got these two persuasive men together. Since then, they've done so much good for so many.
 
It's a shame Joe won't be there laughing along with the rest of us, enjoying one more night together with two dear friends.