WEST HARRISON, Ind. — It's a football coach's dream here, acres of woods in the epicenter of cornfield nowhere, nothing to do but focus with intensity for good success. For the players, the highlight of the day is a game of hearts.

        “A penny a point?” someone asks Gino Guidugli.

        “I wish,” he says. “A little money might make it interesting.”

        Guidugli is here, with the rest of his UC teammates, for 10 days of training camp at a church-owned retreat called Higher Ground. It's half an hour from downtown. It might as well be half a world. “No TV,” Guidugli says. “No girls.” Also, no radios, no cell phones, no pagers. No card-playing, either, supposedly.

        One year here, former UC quarterback Deontey Kenner was caught with a small TV in his room. He claimed it was for watching game tape. When a coach asked him where his VCR was, Kenner had no ready response. The kid was fast on his feet, but not that fast.

UC quarterback Gino Guidugli, Conference USA freshman of the year in 2001, has his eyes set on another Motor City Bowl appearance. (Michael E. Keating photo) | ZOOM |

        “Seems like we're on a mountain somewhere,” Guidugli says.

        He doesn't mind. Higher Ground is a laboratory for him. His position coach, Jeff Filkovski, is Guidugli's mad scientist. Together, they want to create a player people will remember beyond next week.

        Truth: How many of you can name more than a handful of UC football players over the last couple decades? Does the list begin and end with Greg Cook?

        What Guidugli, the kid from Highlands High, has is an opportunity to create an instant buzz and a lasting memory for under-the-radar Bearcats football.

        It doesn't begin here. It's a year-round occupation. But here is where it gets boiled to its essence. “He can be incredibly good” is Filkovski's assessment of Guidugli.

        As a freshman, Guidugli did all the things young QBs do, even the good ones: He scrambled too much, he threw off his back foot, he locked on one receiver. The first half of last season, “I was just kind of out there, not really knowing the coverage, just slinging the ball around, trying to find who was open,” Guidugli says.

        He still set school and league freshman records for completions, yards and TD passes. Now he watches two or three hours of tape a day. What else is there to do?

        “It's my only chance to watch TV, if you want to call it that,” Guidugli says.

        Filkovski has him staying in the pocket, planting his feet, finding options when the planned play breaks down.

        “Talent-wise, if you let him sit in the pocket, he's going to kill you,” the coach says. Filkovski loves Guidugli's brains for the game — “I don't have to explain much. He sees it, it's done” — and Guidugli's natural feel for the position.

        Guidugli has his three best receivers back. He has added 10 pounds to an already QB-sized 6-3, 220-pound body. For so long, UC football has been a past looking for a future. Maybe it's here.

        “I'm here to win games,” Guidugli says. “If I put us on the map, so be it.”

        That's good. This place, Higher Ground, could use a map.

DAUGHERTY: That buzz you hear is UC's QB

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