I don't know how anyone can defend Huggins. I do think he has a lot of basketball knowledge. In fact, I have adopted his defensive philosophy. However, there is more to coaching that just winning games. Graduation rates is just part of it.
Donald LittleThis Cincinnati center was dismissed from the team just last week after he was charged with kidnapping, beating and burning his roommate. He pleaded innocent to charges of felonious assault and kidnapping. He was released from Hamilton County jail on a $50,000 bond while he awaits trial. If convicted he could be sentenced to 20 years in prison. According to the police report, roommate Justin Hodge said the player accused him of stealing money, then hit him on the head with a whiskey bottle. Hodge also said he was tied with tape to a plastic lawn chair, burned with incense and beaten, the police report said. Hodge told police he was stabbed when he tried to escape.
This was after he did this:
Previous run-ins with the law:
• September, 2001: Pleaded guilty to reduced charge of persistent disorderly conduct for assaulting a female tavern manager.
• July, 2001: Pleaded guilty to reduced charges of reckless driving, an open-container violation and having no driver's license in his possessiont. A marijuana possession charge and a speeding allegation were dropped.
• More: Citations in Ohio dating to February 1999 for driving without a license, disorderly conduct, open-container violations and weaving while driving a vehicle.
http://www.cincypost.com/2003/05/24/lonnie05-24-2003.htmlBearcats build on the wrong records These days, it should be all good for the University of Cincinnati basketball team.
Bob Huggins is still around. The season of rebuilding has been survived. Ground has been broken on the vast Varsity Village. And, the legal system permitting, a sterling class of recruits is headed to Clifton.
The complication, of course, is that the best of those, 6-foot-10 center Robert Whaley, was arrested this month on two felony counts of aggravated battery back at his Kansas junior college. The Bearcats draw the line at felony.
This nettlesome policy may also have a bearing on one of Whaley's potential front-court mates, sophomore-to-be Eric Hicks, whose problem is aggravated assault. That's how they classify throwing a beer bottle at a woman in a bar.
And so it goes.
This story is getting as old as the cottage cheese in the back of the refrigerator, and smelling worse. The criminal charges against Whaley and Hicks add to a distinguished litany of Bearcat arrests over the past dozen years, joining those associated with Donald Little for DUI , marijuana possession, and felony kidnapping and assault (what roommate torturing is officially called), B.J. Grove for domestic violence, Eugene Land for shoplifting, Jerome Harper (before he could make it to campus) for assault, D'Juan Baker for felonious assault (hitting his girlfriend in the head with a flower pot), Shawn Myrick for sexual battery, Art Long for domestic violence and hitting a police horse named Cody, Danny Fortson for disorderly conduct, Damon Flint for domestic violence and unauthorized use of property, Ruben Patterson for aggravated burglary, Dontonio Wingfield for criminal trespass (trashing his mother's kitchen) and obstruction of officers (kicking a cop in the stomach), and Louis Banks for rape and sexual assault.
Some of the charges above were eventually dismissed and some of the Bearcats were ultimately acquitted, guilty of no more than common collegiate knuckleheadedness. After a while, though, you'd think they'd stay out of bars and girls' apartments.
You know those displays they have at airports now that show the things you can't carry onto the plane -- guns, box cutters, chainsaws and the like? At the door of the basketball locker room, UC needs a display like that, a glass case containing all the things players aren't allowed to touch -- among them, beer bottles, beer cans, beer glasses, drugs, police horses, roommates, other people's stuff and women.
It certainly needs something to discourage the less prudent Bearcats from burying the program under the fallout of their terrible judgment. Why would Huggins want to stick around for this? Why would a mother send her son to program whose records are stored at the county courthouse?
One might submit that Cincinnati should not be singled out for the unfortunate conduct of its taller athletes. Similarly bad things have been done by players attending the universities of Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio State, Louisville, etc. Just not as often.
Which leads us to the question of why, oh why.
The easy answer is that Huggins recruits bad guys. In fact, that's a little too easy.
A little discretion would certainly go a long way, and standards should never be bartered in the interest of tournament bids. But it's also true that the really good guys -- the irreproachable recruits, the grassy-campus types with grade-A games and collegiate ideals -- tend to be tied up with visits to places like Duke, Stanford and North Carolina. Cincinnati is generally as fine a university as, say, Kentucky or Michigan State, but, unlike those, its larger community is not defined by the school colors.
It is, by contrast, an urban institution attractive to kids unimpressed with classic college towns. Not surprisingly, some of them arrive with street-crafted lifestyles, and perhaps -- even preferably, in some respects -- chips on their high-riding shoulders.
Cornered into risk-taking, Huggins likes his Bearcats a little edgy. Observing an athlete in a high school competition, he and his recruiters might detect a mean streak and appreciate its effect on a basketball game. In that setting, they might not see its effect when the game's over.
Let it be said that there's nothing inherently wrong with the education and nurturing of second-chance kids. (Nor do all of UC's fit that description. There are few better citizens, for instance, than Leonard Stokes and Immanuel McElroy.)
At its best, Huggins' program prepares Kenyon Martin and Nick Van Exel for dominant roles in the NBA playoffs. Both carry baggage, but at this May moment, playing better than ever, they're impressionably viewed at the leading edge of inspired basketball. As they close in on the league finals, the former Cincinnati stars are heaping distinction upon their old school.
They are being badly out-heaped, however, by the criminal charges that continue to pile up on the Clifton campus. Right now, they're only charges -- Whaley and Hicks have not yet had their days in court -- but in the end, neither judge nor jury can restore the reputation of UC basketball.
Only the players can do that
