By Bill Koch
The Cincinnati Enquirer

COMPLETE COVERAGE

• College Basketball scores • Special Championship Week section

Bob Huggins isn't proposing that conference tournaments be abolished, but the University of Cincinnati coach says it's wrong for a league's automatic NCAA bid to be awarded to the winner of the tournament instead of the winner of the regular-season championship.

"I don't think any basketball person would argue that the team that wins through the course of the league should be the league champion and really is the most deserving team to advance," Huggins said.

Conference tournaments, which award teams for performing well over the course of three or four days instead of two months, exist for only one reason, he said, to fill the conference office coffers with money.

"That's why they started," he said. "That's why they continue to flourish. The reason they started saying the conference tournament winner is going to the NCAA was to add interest to the tournament so more people would come and they'd make more money. This whole thing revolves around money. Nobody ever wants to say that but that's the reality of the whole deal. "I think they're fun for the fans. I'm not saying we shouldn't have them. I'm not saying they're a bad thing, I'm just saying they've diminished what happened over a 27-game schedule."

UC, ranked No. 19 in the Ratings Percentage Index, will play in the NCAA Tournament regardless of how it fares in this week's Conference USA Tournament, but the Bearcats could help or harm their NCAA seed based on how they play this week.

"If we're fortunate enough to win it's going to jump our RPI a bunch," Huggins said. "I think we could conceivably get to a No. 3 seed."

E-mail bkoch@enquirer.com