BY PAUL DAUGHERTY
The Cincinnati Enquirer

AUBURN HILLS, Mich. - Sometimes, you just want to scream. Make me wanna holler, Marvin Gaye once sang. Throw up both my hands. It happens a lot when dealing with issues pairing the NCAA and the ''student-athletes'' it professes to serve.

Like now. I don't know what Charles Williams, the erstwhile Cincinnati point guard, is doing this weekend. But it isn't what he wants to be doing, or should be doing.

Williams should be playing basketball in the NCAA Tournament. Instead, he is doing anything but. ''The university,'' as UC athletic director Gerald O'Dell puts it, has decided there could be a problem with Williams' eligibility.

Working closely with the NCAA, the university is.

Tracking down every lead. Step by painstaking step. Getting to the bottom of this troublesome Charles Williams case.

Here's a question:

What case?

Williams took four classes in Cincinnati last summer, to finish his junior college degree requirements. Half a year later, questions have arisen about who paid for the courses. If someone connected with UC fronted the tuition, the school is in trouble with the NCAA lawmen; if not, the school isn't.

Here's what we know:

Williams is academically eligible. No NCAA lawman has said Williams cannot play. To our knowledge, no one has suggested he shouldn't.

Williams says George Tarkanian, his junior college coach, paid for the four courses he needed to complete his junior college requirements. Tarkanian hasn't said otherwise.

So-o-o-o...

What's the problem?

''The primary rule is to be cautious,'' according to Gerald O'Dell.

Cautious? Cautious is avoiding alleys after dark. It's wearing 30 sunblock at the beach.

This isn't cautious. It's tiptoeing past the graveyard, so as not to wake anybody up.

''It just takes time,'' says O'Dell.

No. Getting from Manhattan to Brooklyn in a cab takes time. Solving the riddle of the Sphinx. Watching major league baseball. These take time. Determining who paid Williams' school money should take nothing more than several phone calls.

I ask O'Dell about this. Who's in charge of eligibility issues there? What does he/she say? Why has this become an issue in March? Why is it dragging on longer than a Liz Taylor marriage?

And why, oh why, doesn't anyone believe the kid?

''I'm not going to be able to respond,'' says O'Dell.

It could be that everyone is lying and covering their behinds with both hands. But I doubt it. UC coach Bob Huggins wouldn't risk his career over $1,000 worth of tuition.

It's not even a question whether Williams could be useful to the Bearcats now. Probably, he could. Though I can't recall the last time such a fuss was made over a player averaging 18 minutes and three points a game.

Williams is, to use a coach's phrase, UC's best ''on-the-ball'' defender. Though considering he was party to the crime that was UC's home loss to South Carolina - during which the Gamecocks three-guard lineup outscored Williams and Damon Flint, 74-0 - it's a dubious distinction.

Maybe Williams is what UC needs to reach its potential. Maybe not.

And maybe the fallout from all this could contribute to UC losing Huggins. His relationship with O'Dell, rarely marvelous, has been strained further. Ohio State has a vacancy.

But it shouldn't be about that, either. Huggins had a rocky time with O'Dell's predecessor, Rick Taylor, as well. Huggins tends to feel underappreciated much of the time. If he thinks it'd be better in Columbus, he should talk to John Cooper.

Regardless, this shouldn't be about anyone but Charles Williams. There may be some other incredibly important NCAA rule Williams is suspected of violating. Maybe he accepted pocket lint from a street person who once took a correspondence course at a UC branch campus.

So far, all we know is there is a question of who paid for his summer school. No one has said it was anyone connected with the University of Cincinnati. No one has even suggested it.

So why is Williams guilty until proven innocent?

You can call Enquirer columnist Paul Daugherty at 768-8454.