BY PAUL DAUGHERTY
The Cincinnati Enquirer

We can't call it a third-rate burglary because as far as we know, nothing was stolen. So we'll just call it third rate.

Searching the offices of assistant basketball coaches and others in the athletic department? What did they expect to find? Dirty laundry? Literally?

We're speaking of what supposedly went down between March 12 and 15 at the University of Cincinnati. Seeking truth or dirt or something, staff members answering to Bearcats Athletic Director Gerald O'Dell played private eyes.

This is what is charged. O'Dell hasn't acknowledged or refuted the account, mainly because he isn't talking at all. He was in Chicago Monday. His calls were referred to the athletic publicity office. They didn't talk, either.

And this is the problem. You have one side that's talking, and one that isn't. From what those who are talking are saying, this looked like a job for the White House plumbers.

It's great that O'Dell is concerned with running a clean department. But there are better ways to do it than searching the offices of your employees. There's a Nixon-ian weirdness at work here.

(Note to all involved: Take care of your 17-minute tape gaps. Do it now.)

UC has hired high-octane lawyers to investigate the affairs of point guard Charles Williams. To now, nothing major has come of it.

Someone took notes for him in class until he arrived last summer from California. Someone registered him for courses. A professor apparently not connected with the basketball program or the boosters paid Williams' plane fare home at Christmas.

Ooooh.

When we start punishing people for allowing a kid to spend Christmas with his mother, we should pack up all the balls and forget about it.

Huggins is the man

Questions still linger over who paid for Williams' summer courses. That was the original worry. Nothing in eight weeks of detective work has suggested UC did anything wrong there, either.

So either Gerald O'Dell is being very thorough or he doesn't like his basketball coach very much. Regardless, it seems at the moment that O'Dell has called the bomb squad to blow out a birthday candle.

It seems at the moment that O'Dell is in the bizarre and awkward position of hoping enough dirt is found beneath the basketball rug to justify all the snooping.

If I'm Bob Huggins, what I'm thinking is, ''I'm on the road a few hundred days a year, watching and/or sweet-talking 18-year-old guys. I'm doing this for the benefit of me, but also for the greater economic glory of the UC athletic department, headed by one Gerald O'Dell. Who, it seems, is trying to get me in trouble.

''What the hell is up with that?''

You may not like the notion that Huggins is king in Clifton. But he is. You might be uncomfortable with the idea that Huggins has more power than the man who, theoretically, is his boss. But he does.

You might think Huggins is a self-appointed power of one. You wouldn't be all wrong.

Find smoking gun first

But the fact is, without Huggins, UC basketball is a downbound train, and without UC basketball, UC athletics is a poor man. Another fact is, basketball has not been in NCAA trouble since Huggins took over.

That's not to say he's above the law. If his program broke some major rule, slap it down. But in a year when Louisville's Samaki Walker and Michigan's Robert Traylor magically arrived on campus with shiny new vehicles, paid for by, ahem, relatives, UC's supposed involvement with Williams seems trivial.

Perhaps in the coming weeks, the school's investigation will yield some blockbuster scandal. The snoops are ''proceeding meticulously,'' UC President Joseph Steger said Monday. Good for them.

Until then, we only know what we know. Right now, it amounts to very little against Williams and the basketball program. Making sure you play by the rules is one thing; snooping is another. There had to be a better way.

Enquirer columnist Paul Daugherty welcomes your calls at 768-8454.

HUGGINS' RIFT WITH O'DELL ERUPTS April 26, 1997