By Bill Koch
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Don't look for University of Cincinnati basketball coach Bob Huggins to make a change at point guard soon.

Taron Barker is still Huggins' man, despite an offense that has connected on a meager 38.3 percent of its shots, making it the worst-shooting team in ConferenceUSA.

"The point guard can't make shots for other people," Huggins said Wednesday. "He's got to get better, but he's doing all right. We all need to get better."

Huggins is far less critical of Barker than Barker, who's willing to bear the responsibility for the Bearcats' mediocre 3-2 start. Those UC fans who are beginning to point the finger at him will receive no argument from the object of their wrath.

"It's totally my fault," Barker said. "I'm the point guard. Everything comes through me."

Barker, a 6-foot-1, 200-pound senior, has respectable numbers. He averages 6.0 points, 4.2 rebounds and 6.0 assists a game and has committed only nine turnovers.

But the offense often seems stagnant under his direction, and he has been to the foul line only twice all season, a low number for a point guard who handles the ball so much.

Barker played his worst game of the season Saturday against Xavier. He failed to score, missed all six of his field goal attempts, failed to shoot a free throw for the fourth straight game and had just two assists in 40 minutes.

"I couldn't shoot the ball well," Barker said. "We were finding people open, but we weren't hitting our shots. It wasn't that they stopped us on offense. They didn't. We kept shooting ourselves in the foot."

In his three previous games, Barker put up the kind of numbers point guards dream of - with 26 assists, including 11 against Valparaiso, and just four turnovers.

While it's obvious the UC offense is in a funk and Barker is at least partially responsible, he's also suffering from unfair comparisons with All-American Steve Logan, who completed his eligibility last season as the second-leading scorer in UC history.

Logan was that rare commodity who could play point guard and score at a prolific pace. Barker doesn't pretend to be cut from the same mold.

"Steve Logan and Taron Barker are totally different players," UC assistant coach Keith LeGree said. "It's not even close. (Barker) is a big, strong physical guard who can play good defense, but he's not the fastest guy with the basketball going north and south."

LeGree knows what it's like to follow a point guard legend at UC. He had the misfortune of being compared with Nick Van Exel when he played for the Bearcats.

Like Barker, LeGree's game differed from that of his predecessor. The fans, though, kept waiting to see the reincarnation of Van Exel.

"As a point guard, you have to take some of the blame, because you are a leader and you have the ball in your hands most of the time," LeGree said. "But you can't just say the point guard is the reason we're struggling on offense. That's totally not true."

UC fans have grown accustomed to seeing Logan - and Kenny Satterfield before him - penetrate down the lane either to be fouled or to dish off to a teammate. That's not Barker's game.

And Huggins says it would be a mistake for him to try to make it his game.

"That's the worst thing he could do," Huggins said. "You don't do what you can't do. He's not very quick and he's awfully small, so you get in there and you get swallowed up.

"He doesn't have to penetrate to be good for us. He just has to do a better job of getting the ball to open people."

In the meantime, Barker says he's prepared to take the heat if UC's offense continues to stall.

"It's supposed to be like that," he said. "It ain't a big deal when somebody gets on me that the offense ain't going well. I know it's on me."

E-mail bkoch@enquirer.com