There are things about Bob Huggins that are not open to debate:


-His college basketball teams win games. In his 16 seasons at the University of Cincinnati, the Bearcats were 399-127, won 10 regular-season conference championships, appeared in the postseason every year and reached the Final Four in 1992.

-The man is one heck of a defensive coach. No one enjoys playing against a team coached by Huggins. His 2000 Cincinnati team blocked 223 shots and his'98 squad held Conference USA opponents to barely 59 points per game.

-The fans at Kansas State, where he is beginning his first season, already are in love with the guy. K-State set a season-ticket sales record this year, has sold all 25 new courtside seats, priced at $4,400 each for the season, and plans to construct 14 or 15 luxury suites at the top of Bramlage Coliseum before next season.

The Wildcats' arena is being referred to as "Huggieville."

"We've had an unbelieveable response," said athletic department spokesman Tom Gilbert.




There is one more piece of Huggins' complex job resume that is not debatable: Trouble and controversy have been part of the package.

Huggins, whose K-State team visits Cal on Wednesday night, was fired by Cincinnati in August 2005, given a $3 million buyout and asked to leave the premises by university president Nancy Zimpher.

Her explanation for the largely unpopular decision: "character counts."

Huggins' response skirts the issue a bit. "When they do pretty much an impromptu roast and 7,000 people show up and you have ongoing, continuous support," he said, "would you think there are character issues there?

"Those people who are casting stones, I doubt very seriously they would be greeted by that reaction when they leave. What does that say about my character?"

Perhaps not as much as it says about the priorities of fans who want to hitch their wagon to a winner, and may be willing to dismiss the rest.


Player troubles


In Huggins' case, his body of work suggests a fairly forgiving bunch.

Juxtaposed against all the success his teams had on the court is an exhausting litany of off-court issues. Four times in nine years the NCAA reported his team had a graduation rate of zero percent. According to university figures, 21 of his players at Cincinnati had "significant encounters with law enforcement," including arrests for domestic violence, rape and DUI.

Huggins, 53, had his own DUI arrest and conviction in 2004, which he has acknowledged probably led to his ouster.

Kansas State, which has not appeared in the NCAA tournament the past 10 years, hired Huggins after checking with NCAA enforcement officials and getting a recommendation from Bob Knight. Cincinnati was cited for "lack of institutional control" after an NCAA investigation of the basketball program in 1998, but NCAA officials told K-State athletic director Tim Weiser that the coach never was found to have committed a major violation.

"They did their homework," Huggins said. "They knew some people's perception is certainly not reality."

Weiser, in an interview with the Kansas City Star, said he expects Huggins to perform well in all areas. "A lot of our supporters think it has to be one or the other — win or do things right," he said. "But I don't see why it has to be that way. We can do both. We will do both."

Just in a case, there is a clause in Huggins' contract guaranteeing him at least $800,000 per year, unless his actions cause "material injury to the reputation of the school."

That was at the crux of Zimpher's decision to cut him loose from Cincinnati. Asked if Zimpher's charges related to character had merit, Huggins said his personality didn't need reshaping.

"I would think those around me would say I'm probably the same guy," he said. "We all get older. We all, hopefully, get a little smarter."

Likewise, Huggins defended his former players, noting, "I recruited wonderful guys."

That would include former center Art Long, who was arrested in 1995 for punching a police horse four times after a traffic stop.

"In the Cincinnati media, and hence the national media, the word 'acquittal' doesn't mean anything," Huggins said. "Nobody wants to talk about how many guys actually were convicted."

Long was acquitted after his attorney successfully argued Long and teammate Danny Fortson were petting the horse, not punching it.

But another former Cincinnati player, Donald Little, was charged — and convicted — in 2003 of assault charges against roommate Justin Hodge, whom he believed had stolen money from him. Little was sentenced to 30 days in jail and five years probation after taping Hodge to a lawn chair, punching him hard enough to knock out a permanent bridge and stabbing him with a hot wire coat hanger.

Should the coach take the blame for incidents such as these? Is he responsible for the student-athletes he brings onto a campus?

"Of course, we have responsibility," Huggins said. "I don't know that we have 24-hour responsibility. That's awful hard. The reality is I was there for 16 years. If I had been like most guys and moved every five years, none of that stuff would ever be brought up."

Even after he left Cincinnati — while sitting out the 2005-06 season and after being hired by K-State — Huggins continued to court Tyree Evans, a guard from Richmond, Va. Evans was indicted in September 2005 on charges of rape of a child and indecent assault and battery on a child.

In July, athletic director Weiser announced the university would no longer recruit Evans.

Weiser has said he expects Huggins to pursue players who will represent themselves well in the classroom and community, not just on the basketball court. Kansas State president Jon Wefald told the Manhattan Capital-Journal he wants the program to achieve a 55-percent graduation rate. Using the NCAA's formula, where players have six years to complete their degree, just 28 percent of Huggins' Cincinnati players graduated.


On honor roll


To Huggins' credit, his players' academic performance at Cincinnati did improve some in his final years. In 2001-02, the team's collective grade-point average of 2.57 was best among basketball teams in Conference USA. A year later, six Bearcat players were named to the C-USA Commissioner's Honor Roll.

On the other hand, according to University of Cincinnati officials, one player on the Bearcats' roster had a 0.0 GPA at the time Huggins was forced out.

Bottom line: Coaching basketball is Huggins' primary assignment — that's why Kansas State hired him. Already he has begun to build his program.

Forward Bill Walker, a top-10 recruit from Cincinnati who had exhausted his high school eligibility, signed with the school in early November, and becomes eligible to join the team on Dec. 16.

Then, two weeks ago, Huggins signed a four-man recruiting class ranked by at least one scouting expert as the nation's best. The headliner is Michael Beasley, a 6-8 forward who is considered among the top five high school players in the country and the most celebrated recruit in school history.

Huggins expects the Wildcats to be competitive this season, but it's just a beginning.

"I don't know anything other than how to win," he said. "When you get good enough that you're (in the chase) to win the Big 12, certainly you're good enough to compete nationally.

"That's what we want to do."