Bad-boy Bearcats used to fighting against the world By Pat Forde Special to ESPN.com Aggrieved and injured, the Cincinnati Bearcats may have been backed into the corner they've been longing for all season. Bob Huggins and his teams have always seemed more comfortable with a chip on their shoulders. All teams nowadays moan about a "lack of respect," but Huggins' crew hungered for disrespect and used it as fuel for its furious style of play. The coach tends to be in his element when he's in combat -- with the NCAA, with the refs, with the media, with rival coaches, even with his own players. Game of the region No. 8 North Carolina vs. No. 9 Missouri Friday, 7:55 p.m. ET The Tar Heels stagger into this Dance as a No. 8 seed, their lowest since being a No. 8 in 1990. But beware the lightly regarded Heels: That '90 team went on to shock top seed Oklahoma in the second round. If history is going to repeat itself this year, it must come against a young/old adversary. Missouri rookie coach Quin Snyder will be intimately familiar with every Carolina shuffle cut and down screen from his playing and assistant coaching days under Mike Krzyzewski at Duke. Snyder's smallish team sinks or swims with the 3-point shot. Now, after an awkward, season-long stint in the unusual role of well-respected overdog, Cincinnati is again being knocked. It just might work to its advantage. Disrespected (correctly) by the NCAA Selection Committee in the wake of the calamitous injury to center Kenyon Martin and now widely counted out of the national championship hunt, the Bearcats are simmering. They are steamed over being dropped to a No. 2 seed despite finishing the season 28-3 and No. 1 in the RPI. "It's ridiculous, totally ridiculous," Huggins said Sunday night. "We must be the first team in history to be No. 1 in the RPI and not get a No. 1 seed. That's a historical thing those guys did. How do they know how good we'll be without Kenyon?" They probably went on the available evidence: The Bearcats blast-furnaced Saint Louis by 43 on March 4, then lost to the Billikens by 10 five days later when Martin went down. Contrast that with Arizona winning without Loren Woods against Stanford last week, and you have a case for why 'Zona is a No. 1 and Cincy is a No. 2. But the argument now is secondary to the indignation feeding it. Veteran Cincy watchers view this as a good sign. Us Against The World has worked in Camp Huggs before. It began with his 1992 team, an anonymous crew led to the Final Four by fearless point guard Nick Van Exel. That team strode through a demolished bracket to reach Minneapolis, feeding upon slights real and imagined as it went. From the uniforms to the tattoos to the much-discussed graduation rate, subsequent Cincinnati teams have reveled in their bad-boy image, holding themselves up as a defiant antidote to the sanctimony emanating from Durham, Chapel Hill, Lawrence and other locales. Of course, anger can only take a team so far. It hasn't taken the Bearcats past the NCAA second round since 1996. The larger questions come down to talent and experience, areas devastated by the loss of the nation's best college player to a broken leg last Thursday in the Conference USA tournament. And the South Region is bloated with talent and experience. Seven of the 16 teams -- Stanford, North Carolina, Connecticut, Arkansas, Ohio State, UNLV and Cincy -- played in the Final Four in the 1990s. Four -- the Tar Heels, Huskies, Razorbacks and Rebels -- won national titles. And four -- Cincinnati, Carolina, UConn and Ohio State -- began this season ranked in the top 10. So the Bearcats limp in against stiff competition. Even with considerable talent on hand in Pete Mickeal, DerMarr Johnson, Kenny Satterfield and others, Huggins now must ask everyone to modify and amplify their roles at the last minute. And as Huggins pointed out in Memphis, Martin not only was easily the team's best player but also its traffic cop and emotional wellspring. "Kenyon got everyone in the right place on offense and defense," Huggins said. The challenge of replacing that in a week isn't really fair. But the Bearcats know it, and will turn that unfairness to their advantage. If nothing else, expect flat-out ferocity from Cincinnati for as long as it lasts. "Now we have to respond," Huggins said. "And I have no doubt, we'll respond." Searching for Cinderella Arkansas was on the NIT bubble a week ago, before launching its stunning four-game run to the Southeastern Conference title. Coach Nolan Richardson has compared this baby-faced team to a basket of puppies, prone to running all over each other in mass confusion -- but now the sharp-teethed pups are coming to heel at just the right time. The 11th-seeded Razorbacks are not big but are scary quick, led by freshman Joe Johnson and sophomores Brandon Dean and Teddy Gipson. And the coach knows his way around March: Richardson is 26-13 in the NCAAs and has won at least one game in his last 10 trips. Contrast that with first-round opponent Miami of Florida. The sixth-seeded Hurricanes have won one NCAA Tournament game in their history -- five fewer than Miami of Ohio. Don't believe the hype Tennessee will face a legion of doubters in Birmingham who are waiting for the Volunteers to finally prove their worth in March. Under specific scrutiny will be coach Jerry Green and point guard Tony Harris. The school that gave you Bernard King, Ernie Grunfeld, Dale Ellis, Allan Houston and many other talented players has also given you a total of six NCAA Tournament victories. In history. And five of those belonged to Don DeVoe. Green arrived and quickly began refurbishing a dilapidated program -- with great help from the players Kevin O'Neill left behind when he left in a snit for Northwestern. He also took about two minutes to puff out his chest and start talking big talk that hasn't played well into the postseason. Green's SEC Tournament record: 1-3, with the lone victory coming over a 9-18 LSU team. Green's NCAA Tournament record: 1-3, with the lone victory a shaky one as a No. 4 seed a year ago that was followed by a 30-point loss to 12th-seeded Southwest Missouri State. Tennessee's habit of self-congratulation -- following a big win with a flat loss -- has been in part fueled by mercurial point guard Harris. The junior from Memphis can beat anybody off the dribble -- including himself. Harris' ability to play with a controlled fury still escapes him from time to time, as he pinwheels off into fits of one-on-one ball. It's hard to see him producing 4-6 games of smart play. In seven postseason games (SEC and NCAA tournaments), Harris is 22 for 94 from the field (23.4 percent) and has 26 turnovers. On a roll Nobody in the entire field is hotter than Utah State, winner of 19 straight in a romp through the Big West Conference. Its last loss was Jan. 8 to Brigham Young -- and the game before that, the Aggies upset tourney team Fresno State. The Aggies were one of three teams to run the table in conference play -- Cincinnati and Penn were the others -- and then followed that with a three-game stand in the league tournament. Utah State, which plays UConn, attacks with depth and balance. Four players average between 10.2 and 11.9 points per game, and nobody plays 30 minutes per game. The bad news for the Aggies: Utah State is fighting recent precedent AND the defending national champ. Big West teams have lost six straight first-round games. On life support Missouri's garnering of a No. 9 seed indicates that it was a relatively safe entry to the Dance, but a flurry of late losses had the Tigers a wee bit nervous. Missouri had a late rally fall short at home against Oklahoma State in the final weeks of the season, then followed that up with a thorough stomping at Oklahoma on Senior Night and a close loss at Kansas. The Sooners then nipped Mizzou again in the Big 12 tournament quarterfinals, leaving the Tigers with two days to sweat out their at-large bid. Hot hand If the Huskies are going to mount a serious defense of their national title, it must begin with point guard Khalid El-Amin. The junior point guard is always capable of acquiring the hot hand at any time -- but has been just as capable of losing it at key junctures as well. El-Amin has had some great NCAA moments already -- keeping the ball alive on the glass in the final seconds for the winning shot against Washington in 1998, hitting critical free throws to seal the title in '99 -- but he also failed to make the West All-Region team a year ago as the Huskies won almost in spite of him. He's been emblematic of UConn's fitful season this year: His stats remain strong, but he's thrown in a few clunker games in ugly losses. El-Amin has always loved the big stage, dating back to his 42-point game in the Minnesota state high school title game his senior year, Minneapolis North's third straight state title. Hard to believe he won't rise to the occasion now. Hero in waiting Casey Jacobsen is hardly a nobody, leading Stanford in scoring as a freshman. But Jacobsen tends to get lost among the trees (mascot and otherwise) on a team crowded with good players. The first name everyone mentions with the Cardinal in tough guy Mark "Mad Dog" Madsen. Then comes twins Jason and Jarron Collins. From there, Jacobsen may or may not be next in line on the marquee, along with David Moseley, Ryan Mendez and others. Such is life on one of the most balanced teams in the country. But Jacobsen could be the Stanford player with opportunity to light up the scoreboard this March. Averaging 14.7 points and shooting 44.5 percent from 3-point range, he'll benefit from outmuscled teams trying to throw everything they have at Stanford's inside bulk. And he's more than just a stand-still perimeter shooter. The high school All-American -- who was overshadowed on that level by the likes of Jonathan Bender, Jason Williams, Jason Gardner, Keith Bogans, DerMarr Johnson and Joseph Forte -- can find other ways to score. Look for him to do plenty of it this weekend. Pat Forde of the Louisville Courier-Journal is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.

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