It's always amusing to hear someone on a bar stool or on the radio say something like, "UC needs to go out and get a good point guard," as if there is a Point Guard Supermarket somewhere, and Bob Huggins is perpetually first in the checkout line. In 15 years at UC, Huggins has had seven McDonald's All-Americans. Duke has six right now.

Yet Cincinnati has owned Conference USA the way Ringling owned circus elephants. It has been nine years of Follow The Leader. In those years, UC has won or shared eight regular season titles and won three conference tournaments. Other schools have slipped and slid.

Louisville lost 20 games one year, Memphis went 28-31 combined, in 1999 and 2000. Marquette was a .500 team those same two seasons, Charlotte lost 15 times in '97 and 16 in 2000. UC has never been worse than 17-12, last year.

Do you know how hard this is to do? UC isn't Duke. It doesn't enjoy the sex appeal of playing in the Big East (yet) or the ACC or even the Big 10. Kids with big resumes do not grow up praying they'll play in Clifton. It was said about Dean Smith, when he was reigning at North Carolina, that he didn't "recruit" players. He "selected" them.

What does Huggins do? Trawl?

UC has a year left in C-Hyphen-USA. Then the league cracks like an egg: Five schools to the Big East, two to the Atlantic 10, one to the Mountain West. The Bearcats legacy is secure, and it is this: In a geographically absurd, made-for-TV-markets league, UC has provided consistent legitimacy.

That's Huggins' UC legacy, too. Working on an urban campus, in a middling league at a school where the basketball tradition was proud, if distant, he has averaged almost 25 wins a year. That's almost unheard of.

C-USA schools haven't necessarily recruited players they've thought could compete with UC. This isn't the AFC Central, where every team knows success is predicated on a 230-pound running back and a winter-ready defense, because that's how Pittsburgh and the Ravens have done it.

Rick Pitino isn't trying to match UC's weight-room bulk. He's not signing linebackers to play for Louisville. The Cardinals' best player, 6-foot-7, 185-pound Francisco Garcia, couldn't bench press Pitino's national championship ring.

But UC has set the standard for so long, there is no other standard. After Marquette won the league last year, Tom Crean expressed amazement at how hard it was to do, and was incredulous that UC had done it routinely.

Without UC, maybe Memphis doesn't spend millions on John Calipari. Maybe Marquette doesn't dial up former UC strength coach Mickey Marotti. It was under Marotti's tutelage that the Bearcats perfected their muscle-flexing image. The Marquette people asked Marotti who should run their strength program. The Golden Eagles also hired UC's basketball trainer, Jayd Grossman.

"A lot of people in our league have taken strength training more seriously," Huggins said.

C-USA is hopeful of getting six NCAA Tournament bids Sunday, two more than it ever has. This weekend's conference tournament is a made-for-money carnival, significant for tournament stature and for marginal teams seeking a back door to the Madness. The best the Bearcats can hope for is to move north a couple seeding spots.

They probably won't win it this weekend. If form holds, they'll have to beat three NCAA tournament teams in three days, Louisville, Memphis and DePaul. The Bearcats haven't showed that kind of consistency.

But their place in C-USA won't change. They've owned it like a queen owns jewels.

E-mail pdaugherty@enquirer.com