Can you specifically asign USB ports?

Hope this doesn't sound too lame--I've used my system profiler to learn about my available usb ports. Issue came up w/ using a dance pad/game controller so my daughter can use Stepmania (a DDR sim). As long as the game controller (RedOctane--plug and play, no drivers needed) shows up in the USB device tree in a USB Bus category, all goes well. But sometimes (even if is physically still plugged into the same slot ) it shows up in the USB device tree as a hub to the USB Bus and then the pad will not work when the Stepmania program is opened. Is there some way I can manage the device tree to keep this peripheral in the bus (ie not hub) category. I swear I've read every usb question in all the archives/forums and have not seen this issue raised. Am I crazy or what? At one point I thought the pad was screwed and that I was imaging the above issue. I kept trying to get the pad/controller to be recognised in a non-hub port but I couldn't find a way. When I came back 4-5 hrs later, restarted and checked system profiler;the pad was back in a non-hub category and the program worked like a charm ( my kid danced for hours--yay!) We left everything in place but, you guessed it, the next day when we turned on our imac, the pad was back in hub status and no dancing was happening (Oh no!) Odd as this may seem , it is clearly not related to which specific port I am using (yes, I'm using the ports on the back; no, other than keyboard/mouse, nothing else is plugged in and there are no actual/external hubs in use.)
What do you think? Suggestions?

Thanks for anyhelp.

iMac g4 1.25GHz Mac OS X (10.3.9)