MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – These TV people really know what they're doing! If you are going to put together some Big 12-Big East Battle matchups and you're down to West Virginia and Xavier, why not have Xavier's old Public Enemy No. 1 return to the Cintas Center?
 
Public Enemy No. 1 for the Musketeers for years, of course, was former Cincinnati coach Bob Huggins, whose Bearcat teams used to play Xavier in the annual Crosstown Shootout game. 
 
In the long history of this volatile basketball series, nobody could elevate the blood pressures of Xavier alums the way Bob Huggins could. His Cincinnati teams faced Xavier 16 times from 1990 until 2005, winning eight and the Musketeers winning eight.
 
An online posting of Xavier's 10 greatest basketball wins lists three against Huggins - one in 1990, another in 1996 and the 2008 NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 victory when Huggins was coaching at West Virginia.
 
In the 1990 game, it came down to a referee's decision in overtime that gave possession of the ball to 23^rd-ranked Xavier, which led to Jamal Walker hitting a 3-point basket with seven seconds left to give the Musketeers a 90-88 victory.
 
Xavier fans took delight in watching Huggins chase the referees into the old Cincinnati Gardens locker room in what was the first of five Crosstown Shootout Games pitting Huggins against Xavier coach Pete Gillen.
 
Xavier's other red-letter victory against Huggins and Cincinnati happened in 1996 when Skip Prosser's Musketeers knocked off the No. 1-ranked Bearcats 71-69. That prompted Xavier play-by-play man Andy MacWilliams to exclaim, "The Cincinnati Bearcats are No. 1 in the country and No. 2 in their own city!"
 
That was likely in response to the Huggins quip about the Cincinnati mayor once telling him not to worry too much about Xavier because Cincinnati is never going to change the name of the city.
 
Considering UC alums outnumber Xavier's about 10 to 1, it's easy to see why this basketball game is so meaningful to Xavier rooters.
 
The only Xavier supporter I know is Roger Ruhl, who spent three years at WVU and succeeded Eddie Barrett as the school's sports information director in the late 1960s before enjoying an impressive career with the Cincinnati Reds and later the Greater Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce.
 
Roger still owns Xavier season tickets and will be sitting in Row 11, directly across from the Xavier bench on Saturday night.

"It wasn't always easy being a Xavier fan," Ruhl said, alluding to Xavier's dark days in the 1970s and 1980s before Gillen's arrival in 1985. BG (Before Gillen), Xavier was actually bad enough to be invited to play at the WVU Coliseum in 1979 when Gale Catlett was hunting for wins to rebuild the Mountaineer program. Bob Staak was Xavier's coach back then.
 
But things changed immediately for Xavier when Gillen took over and the Musketeers began playing games at Cincinnati Gardens, the old home of the Cincinnati Royals professional basketball team.
 
Then, the Crosstown Shootout changed dramatically when Huggins took a moribund Cincinnati program in 1990 and immediately began challenging Gillen for city supremacy. That put Huggins directly in the crosshairs of Gillen and they were like two dogs in a room growling at each other. Forget the paper, it was strictly rocks and scissors with those two guys.
 
As for Prosser, Huggins and Prosser got along much better in the sandbox and Huggins was pretty torn up when he learned that Skip died suddenly of a heart attack at age 56 in the summer of 2007.
 
"I was actually with him the night before," Huggins recalled. "I wasn't at the same table, but I was right across from him, and we were talking back and forth."
 
Huggins said the two once agreed that when they retired - Skip from Xavier and Huggins from Cincinnati - they'd get together once a week and share old basketball stories over a couple of beers.
 
That was never in the cards for Huggins and Gillen.
 
But fortunately, time has a way of softening old wounds. Gillen is now in the TV business; he called a couple of Huggins' West Virginia games in Mexico a few years ago, and they got along down there like a couple of long-lost buddies.
 
"No one talks faster than Pete Gillen," Huggins said Thursday afternoon. "He can get words out in a hurry, but we became friends."
 
"That's good to hear," Ruhl added. "It was fairly obvious that he and Pete Gillen did not get along very well. Gillen had a trait of poor-mouthing a bit, 'we're the little guy' and 'nobody is expecting much out of us,' and I don't think Huggins appreciated that."
 
Xavier fans certainly had little appreciation for Huggins or his Cincinnati program, and they always reveled in the chance to beat his teams. The students who used to serenade Huggins with four-letter words and give him the "We're No. 1" salute with their middle fingers are now the parents of the Xavier students who will be attending Saturday night's game.
 
It will be interesting to see if Huggins hating is in their DNA, or if it was just a passing of the times.
 
"The Xavier student body always gave him their best shot," Ruhl said. "That will be interesting to see their reaction when he walks into the arena because of the amount of time that's gone by. I don't know if the feeling is still there."
 
That remains to be seen, but the feeling is still there for Huggins. He got an earful for a couple of hours a night eight different times during his 16 seasons at Cincinnati.
 
"They will call names out, yes," he said with a chuckle, "but I was never combative. If the same things happened to you, you'd be much more combative than I was."
 
As for his fondest Cincinnati-Xavier memories, Huggins steered clear of that one. He pleaded the fifth several times when pressed for a good story or two.
 
"I don't have any good thoughts of Xavier, whatsoever. None," he said.
 
However, he did admit to enjoying coaching games inside historic Cincinnati Gardens, which was demolished in 2018.
 
"You could smell the popcorn and the hot dogs, and it was really neat," Huggins said. "You're there and Oscar (Robertson) walks in and Connie Direking comes in and that was great. I was told the Royals used to live across the street from the arena and would walk to work."
 
The last time Huggins was in Cintas Arena, he was wearing designer suits, silk ties and Italian loafers. On Saturday, he will be sporting his trademark Little General West Virginia pullover and a pair of khaki slacks. The sideline prowling will be confined to him sitting on a stool in front of the scorer's table.
 
However, he will be bringing another good basketball team in there that is coming off an impressive 84-55 victory over Florida in Portland last Sunday night.
 
Xavier is good, too, with Sean Miller back in the fold for his second stint after leaving Xavier in 2009 to coach Arizona for 12 seasons. This year, he's got a 7-footer in Jack Nunge who can shoot 3s and set of big guards who can shoot and get to the rim, according to Huggins.
 
"They can score," he said. "When you've got a 7-footer who can step out and make 3s at an alarming rate for an opponent … to drag your big that far away from the goal is a tremendous advantage for them."
 
Another advantage is the 10,250-seat Cintas Center, where the Musketeers are 4-1 this season after Wednesday night's 32-point victory over Southeast Louisiana.
 
Knocking off the Mountaineers and Huggins on Saturday night would be a big shot of adrenaline to Miller and his players in his second go-around with the Musketeers.
 
Tipoff is set for 6:30 p.m. and FS1 (Matt Schumaker and Dickey Simpkins) will televise the game nationally.
 
Mountaineer Sports Network coverage with Tony Caridi, Jay Jacobs and David Kahn begins at 5:30 p.m. on stations throughout West Virginia, online on WVUsports.com and the WVU Gameday and The Varsity Network apps.
 
So far, the Big 12 is 4-3 in its games against the Big East with Texas Tech defeating Georgetown, TCU downing Providence, Texas knocking off Creighton and Kansas routing Seton Hall.
 
For the Big East, Marquette routed Baylor, Butler defeated Kansas State and Connecticut downed Oklahoma State.
 
Oklahoma and Villanova will meet at 12:30 p.m. on Saturday in Philadelphia and the challenge will conclude on Sunday when St. John's plays at Iowa State.