Bob Huggins knew all about Sean Miller's superb ball-handling skills even before Miller showed them off for Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show at age 12.

The child prodigy from Beaver Falls used to trail his father, John, a highly successful high school basketball coach, from camp to camp each summer.

Huggins had been following a similar blueprint for much longer after playing for his dad, Charles, in eastern Ohio.

"Coaches' sons have a bond because we've all kind of grown up that same hard way where basketball is really important," Miller said yesterday during a conference call with reporters.

There is a 15-year age difference between the two coaches -- Xavier's Miller is 39, West Virginia's Huggins 54 -- but they have a tremendous amount of respect for each other.

Come Thursday, their friendship will be put on hold for a few hours when No. 3 seed Xavier (29-6) meets No. 7 West Virginia (26-10) in the NCAA West Region semifinals at U.S. Airways Center in Phoenix.

It won't be easy.

"He's always been great to me, always has shown me a lot of respect," Miller said of Huggins. "That's the beauty of him. He's a straight shooter, and what he says, he does."

Miller, who has been mentioned as a possible candidate for the Indiana job, is 1-1 all time against Huggins. Miller has the Musketeers in the Sweet 16 for just the third time in school history.

"They've got a lot of really good players," Huggins said. "And Sean's done a great, great job of keeping everything in check."

Miller and Huggins are quick to credit their fathers for their success.

Miller was a star point guard at Blackhawk High School in the mid-1980s. After playing for his dad, he landed at Pitt, where he was named Big East freshman of the year in 1988.

After graduating from college in 1992, he took a graduate assistant coaching job at Wisconsin. He also had assistant gigs at Miami (Ohio), Pitt, North Carolina State and Xavier, where he took over as coach in 2004.

Miller's dad retired in 2005 as one of the winningest coaches in WPIAL history with 657 wins split between Riverside and Blackhawk. He won eight WPIAL titles and four PIAA crowns.

He has spent a lot of time in Cincinnati this season, following his son and Xavier. Archie Miller, an assistant coach at nearby Ohio State, has been keeping a close eye on his older brother's success, too.

"It's been great to have dad accompany our team," Sean Miller said. "But he's really low key in his advice. I think he's more interested in my three sons than he is in the team that I coach."

Huggins, born in Morgantown, was the 1972 Ohio high school player of the year. He played for his dad at Indian Valley South in the tiny town of Gnadenhutten, which he described last weekend as having "500 people, two stoplights and nine bars."

The elder Huggins spent 20 years coaching at five different schools. He was 398-74 during his Hall of Fame career, winning 10 district championships, seven regional titles and three state crowns.

Miller and Huggins have an influential Pittsburgh connection -- local businessman J.O. Stright -- who used to operate the Pittsburgh JOTS, a highly successful AAU team.

"That was my summer job when I was a student at Pitt," Miller said. "My dad would coach the JOTS with J.O. And Huggins was the benefactor of all of it. He didn't coach the JOTS, he just took all the good players."