By Bill Koch
The Cincinnati Enquirer

When the University of Cincinnati's basketball schedule was released late last summer, it looked like a schedule that had been toned down for a team that had lost four starters from a 31-4 team.

The only marquee game was Oregon in the Jimmy V Classic. Oklahoma State was on there, but the Cowboys weren't expected to have one of their best teams.

Other than that, it was a slate filled with the usual suspects - the neighborhood rivals of Xavier, Dayton and Miami; the Conference USA opponents; and a bunch of no-name schools from the mid-major conferences.

But as the regular season winds to its conclusion, the same schedule that seemed so lackluster a few months ago now looms as the nation's fifth-most challenging.

As a result, the Bearcats, despite a 14-6 record, were No.18 in Monday's Ratings Percentage Index.

The man responsible for scheduling at UC is associate head coach Dan Peters. Armed with a college directory and a telephone, Peters assembles a schedule he hopes will place the Bearcats in the position they are in today.

Peters tries each year to formulate a schedule - subject to the approval of UC head coach Bob Huggins and athletic director Bob Goin - that will be formidable enough to put the Bearcats in line for an NCAA Tournament berth, but not so overwhelming they get overmatched.

It's a delicate balance, and one Peters takes very seriously.

"The two most important things in a successful program next to leadership at the top are recruiting and scheduling," Peters said. "You've got to be smart the way you do things. You can help yourself or you can hurt yourself. To go out and schedule 10 Top 25 teams is crazy. That doesn't make sense."

Sometimes even the best-laid plans can backfire. And sometimes things can work out even better than anyone could have imagined. No one, for example, expected Louisville to be ranked No.l in the RPI. No one expected Oklahoma State (No.5) to have the kind of season it's having.

Both have given a boost to UC's strength of schedule, along with DePaul, which has risen under first-year coach Dave Leitao to secure a No.39 RPI.

UC also has been helped by XU (No.23), Dayton (No.24) and Oregon (No.36) outside the league, and by Marquette (No.17) in Conference USA.

UC's formula remains pretty much the same every year. Like most upper-echelon programs, the Bearcats play their share of games at home against teams they're expected to beat. They play a few big-name teams on national television, and then they play the teams in their conference.

Peters tries to make four or five scheduling calls every day so that by the time the season is over, the schedule for the following year is almost set except for the TV games arranged during the summer.

"We try to get the better teams that are going to be competitive and give us a game," Peters said. "We don't want to play five teams where it's going to be a 40-point win. We try to get teams that have been in the NCAA Tournament and need guaranteed money."

Getting the right mix of opponents isn't easy. UC's 188-25 record in Shoemaker Center turns off some schools. Others come for the experience and the guaranteed money, anywhere from $40,000 to $50,000 on average.

Ideally, UC wants to play teams that will finish among the top 100 in the RPI. This year Oklahoma State, Xavier, Dayton, Clemson, Valparaiso and Miami are meeting that standard.

Chattanooga (No.104), LaSalle (No.135) and Tennessee Tech (No.139) aren't far off. The lowest ranked non-league opponent on the schedule is Florida A&M. (No.206).

"We not only want to play the better teams," Huggins said, "but teams that have historically played bigger people. I don't want to play a team and then they end up playing Rio Grande and Urbana. That doesn't do us any good."

Much of next season's schedule is already set. In addition to their C-USA schedule, the Bearcats will play Clemson at home, Xavier and Valparaiso on the road and Dayton at home. They also probably will play Miami again at U.S. Bank Arena and will play a few big-name teams on national television.

E-mail bkoch@enquirer.com