Winner and champion are two other terms that appropriately portray Huggins' two-decade illustrious career as a head coach and his 12 seasons as head coach at the University of Cincinnati.

Huggins' accomplishments rank him with the nation's top major university coaches. His 469-168 record (.736) amassed during his 20 seasons as a head coach ranks him ninth in winning percentage and 26th in victories among active Division I mentors. His string of ten consecutive NCAA tournament appearances is the fourth-longest active streak.

His teams have won over 20 games in all but three of those 20 campaigns, and he has averaged 23.5 wins per campaign, 27.0 over the past six years.

Huggins, 46, has compiled a 301-96 record (.758) in his 12 years at Cincinnati, making him the winningest coach in terms of victories and percentage in the school's rich basketball history.

Huggins has directed Cincinnati to eight conference regular season titles and six league tournament titles. The Bearcats have been to postseason play in each of Huggins' 12 seasons at UC, advancing to the Elite Eight of the NCAA tournament three times and in 1991-92, appearing in the Final Four.

Huggins, who has earned the Ray Meyer Award as the Conference USA Coach of the Year in three of the past four seasons (1997-98, 1998-99 and 1999-00), was named co-national coach of the year by The Sporting News last season and was Basketball Times' national coach of the year in 1997-98. He earned national coach of the year recognition from Hoop Scoop in 1991-92 and Playboy in 1992-93.

His success was further recognized by his selection to the coaching staff of the 1993 U.S. World University Games team. He helped direct the United States to the Gold Medal. In 2000, Huggins was an assistant on the U.S. Select Team which played the U.S. Olympic team in a pre-Olympic game.

Huggins is truly a proven success as a program-builder, recruiter, game strategist and inspirational leader, and he has demonstrated this in a number of varying situations during his tenure at Cincinnati.

Inheriting a team short on numbers, he inspired and drove that 1989-90 squad to a postseason tournament berth. Two seasons later, he assimilated the talents of four junior college transfers and a smattering of seasoned veterans into a cohesive unit which he directed to successive finishes in the Final Four and Elite Eight.

Over the ensuing seasons, he developed young and inexperienced teams with as many as three freshmen starters into squads which captured two more league titles and made another pair of NCAA appearances.

Huggins surprised even the most astute college basketball followers in 1997-98 by directing a team which had only one returning starter to a 27-6 record, conference regular season and tournament titles, a No. 2 seed in the NCAA tournament and a Top 10 finish in the polls.

He has also directed star-studded teams, while developing the individual talents of players such as consensus All-Americans Danny Fortson and Kenyon Martin, to a succession of conference championships and NCAA tournament runs.

Huggins has achieved similar success on the recruiting trails. He has attracted three No. 1-rated junior college players and five McDonald's All-Americans to the Cincinnati campus, while five of his last eight recruiting classes have been ranked among the nation's top ten.

Huggins' personal drive and his intense, competitive approach are the staples of his success. With a heavy emphasis on a hounding, trapping pressure defensive style of play, he has turned his teams into over-achievers.

Huggins was only 27 when he became a collegiate head coach, accepting the position at Walsh College in 1980.

He compiled a 71-26 record in three seasons at Walsh, twice earning NAIA District 22 Coach of the Year honors. Huggins directed the 1982-83 team to a perfect 30-0 regular season mark and an eventual 34-1 mark.

After serving as an assistant at Central Florida for the 1983-84 season, Huggins was named head coach at Akron where he compiled a 97-46 record and reached postseason play in three of his five seasons there.

Huggins launched his coaching career as a graduate assistant on Joedy Gardner's staff at West Virginia in 1977-78. He then spent two years as an assistant to Eldon Miller at Ohio State.