By Bill Koch
On the morning after Steve Sanders made a three-point shot at the buzzer to win UC’s first game at the new Shoemaker Center, he was in coach Bob Huggins’ office.
“He says, ‘Steve, you just went in the history books,’” Sanders said. “’You are part of UC basketball history.’ I said, ‘Coach, in two weeks nobody’s going to be talking about this shot.’ That’s what I said in 1989. It’s amazing to me that it’s 2021 and we’re talking about something that happened 32 years ago.”
On Nov. 25, 1989, Sanders’ memorable shot gave the Bearcats a 66-64 victory over 20th-ranked Minnesota in their first game under Huggins, who had taken over for Tony Yates after he was fired at the end of the 1988-89 season.
At the time, the Bearcats had gone 12 years without an NCAA Tournament appearance. They had played their home games for 11 seasons downtown at Riverfront Coliseum and two at Cincinnati Gardens before returning to campus to play in a new arena, inspiring hope among UC fans that an aggressive new head coach would herald a return to the glory days the Bearcats experienced in the 1960s.
Huggins was beginning his UC tenure in a program that was on NCAA probation for infractions under Yates. He had four starters returning from the previous year, but only eight scholarship players overall. Sanders, a Cleveland native who had just completed his senior year as a wide receiver on the UC football team, figured there might be a spot for him on the short-handed basketball team.
He had played both football and basketball at Shaw High School in Cleveland, and had played against the current UC basketball players in open gym during the offseason, so he was confident he wouldn’t be overmatched on the court. He and fellow football player Roosevelt Mukes made the team during tryouts, but as Sanders went through the rigors of pre-season conditioning he began to wonder if this was something he really wanted to do and told assistant coach Larry Harrison that he needed to take a break to think things through.
“I took a two-week break from conditioning,” Sanders said. “Then as I would see people walking around campus wearing their practice gear, guys that I was playing open gym with, my ego kicked in and I was like, you know what, Steve, you can do this. Let’s just do it. I never thought in a million years that it would be like it was.”
Once practice began, Huggins called Sanders and Mukes into his office and told them there was very little chance they would see much playing time. He needed them mainly to give him enough players to conduct a full practice. Mukes then quit, but Sanders stayed.
One day during practice, Huggins gave Sanders a chance to play with the first team. Sanders took full advantage of the opportunity. Not only did he see significant playing time, he became an unlikely starter, along with Andre Tate, Lou Banks, Levertis Robinson and Keith Starks.
“My margin for error was so small I had no chance to enjoy the moment,” Sanders said. “I had to focus on making sure I made as few mistakes as possible. Every time when I caught the ball I was going to do one of two things quick. I was going to shoot it or I was going to pass it. I wasn’t going to try to dribble through traffic.”
It didn’t take him long to see that the culture on the basketball team under Huggins was completely different from what he had experienced playing football under the laid-back Dave Currey, who like Yates, had been fired the year before.
“It was like night and day,” Sanders said, “from a laid-back, casual atmosphere where the emphasis was not on winning to a very intense atmosphere where the atmosphere coming in the door was that we’re tying to win. We’re not waiting a year. We’re not rebuilding. We’re not conceding. We’re coming to win and compete.”
Huggins established that attitude among his players from the start of practice. The best way to convince the fan base that things had changed was to start with a bang by knocking off favored Minnesota. There was never any doubt among the players, Sanders said, that they would beat the Golden Gophers.
“From day one coach Huggins said to us, ‘We’re going to beat Minnesota and this is how we’re going to do it,’” Sanders said. “He would break everything down. He would say, ‘Levertis, which one of those guys do you think is more athletic than you? Lou, can these guys guard you?’ We never went in with the underdog mentality. We went in with the attitude of we’re going to win this game. We were prepared.
“Everything that he said was going to happen in the game did. They didn’t do anything to surprise us. We were as athletic as them. We felt like we were as talented as them, and it showed. We knew it would be tough, but we never thought we would lose.”
Only 8,684 fans showed up at the 13,176-seat Shoe for opening night. The game unfolded just as Huggins said it would, with the undermanned, unranked Bearcats in position to pull the upset.
Still, with 22 seconds left, they trailed 64-63 as they brought the ball up the court. When Starks tried to throw a pass to Tate in the lane, Minnesota’s Kevin Lynch intercepted it and dribbled the ball down the floor near the Minnesota bench. Tate followed him, but wisely didn’t foul. With Lynch pinned against the sideline, he appeared to panic and tried to throw the ball off Tate, apparently hoping that it would go out of bounds.
Instead, he threw it past Tate and it bounced back down the court toward the UC basket where it went out of bounds to the Bearcats with .8 of a second remaining. Minnesota called time out. During the timeout, Huggins designed a play, assigning Tate to throw the ball inbounds.
“We had a triangle set up in front of the rim,” Sanders said. “The play was designed to have some screen action and Andre was supposed to just lob the ball in front of the rim so somebody could tip it in.
“As we were just about to break the huddle, coach Huggins says to me, ‘Steve, if they cannot get this ball in, you need to break to the ball because Andre is going to throw it to you. This is where football helped me, being a wide receiver. You see me break to the ball and then give a move. That gets me open. Andre throws a perfect pass. When I shot the ball it felt so pure and so perfect on the release that I knew it was going in.”
Tate passed to him in the right corner. Sanders caught the pass and released the shot almost in the same motion to beat the clock. The ball fell through the net.
“I felt like I was plugged into a socket,” Sanders said. “There was so much energy and electricity going through my body. I jump and I run. (My teammates) tackle me. They pick me up. When they put me down, I run across the court and up into the stands where the band is. Then I come back down and when everybody is gone I’m still on the court jumping around.
“Finally I run in the locker room after everybody else and I’m so excited, this is how I calm down: I go in the shower and lay on the floor. I just laid on the shower floor.”
The Bearcats went on to post a 20-14 record that season and played in the National Invitation Tournament where they lost at DePaul, 61-59, in the second round. Sanders started all 34 games. He averaged 7.0 points and led the Metro Conference in 3-point shooting percentage (43.8).
After the season ended, Sanders was mentally and physically exhausted.
“I had a Chevy Chevette parked on campus,” he said. “After we get back from Chicago, I go to my apartment, pack a bag and drive to Cleveland. I’m in my mother’s basement and I probably sleep for the better part of five or six days. I was just so exhausted because I gave everything I had. When the season was over I just needed to be at peace.”
Sanders has talked about that shot numerous times over the years, but only when he’s asked.
“Even to this day, I referee high school basketball and I get people at basketball games say, ‘Are you that Steve Sanders?’” he said. “I don’t mind talking about it, but I don’t run around saying, ‘Hey, I’m Steve Sanders, I’m the one that made the shot.’ I understand the importance of it and the effect that it’s had on so many people. It would be selfish of me to say I’m tired of talking about it or I don’t want to talk about it.”
Actually, he does bring it up to one person without being asked. That person is former UC player Eric Hicks, who was a 1,000-point scorer and a first-team all-Big East Conference selection in 2006.
“That’s my guy,” Sanders said. “I talk to Eric all the time. I tell him, 'Eric, you were a better basketball player than me, but I’m more famous than you.' I do it to aggravate him. I’m like, Eric, there’s a lot of people who don’t even know who you are, but they know who I am.”
On the morning after Steve Sanders made a three-point shot at the buzzer to win UC’s first game at the new Shoemaker Center, he was in coach Bob Huggins’ office.
“He says, ‘Steve, you just went in the history books,’” Sanders said. “’You are part of UC basketball history.’ I said, ‘Coach, in two weeks nobody’s going to be talking about this shot.’ That’s what I said in 1989. It’s amazing to me that it’s 2021 and we’re talking about something that happened 32 years ago.”
On Nov. 25, 1989, Sanders’ memorable shot gave the Bearcats a 66-64 victory over 20th-ranked Minnesota in their first game under Huggins, who had taken over for Tony Yates after he was fired at the end of the 1988-89 season.
At the time, the Bearcats had gone 12 years without an NCAA Tournament appearance. They had played their home games for 11 seasons downtown at Riverfront Coliseum and two at Cincinnati Gardens before returning to campus to play in a new arena, inspiring hope among UC fans that an aggressive new head coach would herald a return to the glory days the Bearcats experienced in the 1960s.
Huggins was beginning his UC tenure in a program that was on NCAA probation for infractions under Yates. He had four starters returning from the previous year, but only eight scholarship players overall. Sanders, a Cleveland native who had just completed his senior year as a wide receiver on the UC football team, figured there might be a spot for him on the short-handed basketball team.
He had played both football and basketball at Shaw High School in Cleveland, and had played against the current UC basketball players in open gym during the offseason, so he was confident he wouldn’t be overmatched on the court. He and fellow football player Roosevelt Mukes made the team during tryouts, but as Sanders went through the rigors of pre-season conditioning he began to wonder if this was something he really wanted to do and told assistant coach Larry Harrison that he needed to take a break to think things through.
“I took a two-week break from conditioning,” Sanders said. “Then as I would see people walking around campus wearing their practice gear, guys that I was playing open gym with, my ego kicked in and I was like, you know what, Steve, you can do this. Let’s just do it. I never thought in a million years that it would be like it was.”
Once practice began, Huggins called Sanders and Mukes into his office and told them there was very little chance they would see much playing time. He needed them mainly to give him enough players to conduct a full practice. Mukes then quit, but Sanders stayed.
One day during practice, Huggins gave Sanders a chance to play with the first team. Sanders took full advantage of the opportunity. Not only did he see significant playing time, he became an unlikely starter, along with Andre Tate, Lou Banks, Levertis Robinson and Keith Starks.
“My margin for error was so small I had no chance to enjoy the moment,” Sanders said. “I had to focus on making sure I made as few mistakes as possible. Every time when I caught the ball I was going to do one of two things quick. I was going to shoot it or I was going to pass it. I wasn’t going to try to dribble through traffic.”
It didn’t take him long to see that the culture on the basketball team under Huggins was completely different from what he had experienced playing football under the laid-back Dave Currey, who like Yates, had been fired the year before.
“It was like night and day,” Sanders said, “from a laid-back, casual atmosphere where the emphasis was not on winning to a very intense atmosphere where the atmosphere coming in the door was that we’re tying to win. We’re not waiting a year. We’re not rebuilding. We’re not conceding. We’re coming to win and compete.”
Huggins established that attitude among his players from the start of practice. The best way to convince the fan base that things had changed was to start with a bang by knocking off favored Minnesota. There was never any doubt among the players, Sanders said, that they would beat the Golden Gophers.
“From day one coach Huggins said to us, ‘We’re going to beat Minnesota and this is how we’re going to do it,’” Sanders said. “He would break everything down. He would say, ‘Levertis, which one of those guys do you think is more athletic than you? Lou, can these guys guard you?’ We never went in with the underdog mentality. We went in with the attitude of we’re going to win this game. We were prepared.
“Everything that he said was going to happen in the game did. They didn’t do anything to surprise us. We were as athletic as them. We felt like we were as talented as them, and it showed. We knew it would be tough, but we never thought we would lose.”
Only 8,684 fans showed up at the 13,176-seat Shoe for opening night. The game unfolded just as Huggins said it would, with the undermanned, unranked Bearcats in position to pull the upset.
Still, with 22 seconds left, they trailed 64-63 as they brought the ball up the court. When Starks tried to throw a pass to Tate in the lane, Minnesota’s Kevin Lynch intercepted it and dribbled the ball down the floor near the Minnesota bench. Tate followed him, but wisely didn’t foul. With Lynch pinned against the sideline, he appeared to panic and tried to throw the ball off Tate, apparently hoping that it would go out of bounds.
Instead, he threw it past Tate and it bounced back down the court toward the UC basket where it went out of bounds to the Bearcats with .8 of a second remaining. Minnesota called time out. During the timeout, Huggins designed a play, assigning Tate to throw the ball inbounds.
“We had a triangle set up in front of the rim,” Sanders said. “The play was designed to have some screen action and Andre was supposed to just lob the ball in front of the rim so somebody could tip it in.
“As we were just about to break the huddle, coach Huggins says to me, ‘Steve, if they cannot get this ball in, you need to break to the ball because Andre is going to throw it to you. This is where football helped me, being a wide receiver. You see me break to the ball and then give a move. That gets me open. Andre throws a perfect pass. When I shot the ball it felt so pure and so perfect on the release that I knew it was going in.”
Tate passed to him in the right corner. Sanders caught the pass and released the shot almost in the same motion to beat the clock. The ball fell through the net.
“I felt like I was plugged into a socket,” Sanders said. “There was so much energy and electricity going through my body. I jump and I run. (My teammates) tackle me. They pick me up. When they put me down, I run across the court and up into the stands where the band is. Then I come back down and when everybody is gone I’m still on the court jumping around.
“Finally I run in the locker room after everybody else and I’m so excited, this is how I calm down: I go in the shower and lay on the floor. I just laid on the shower floor.”
The Bearcats went on to post a 20-14 record that season and played in the National Invitation Tournament where they lost at DePaul, 61-59, in the second round. Sanders started all 34 games. He averaged 7.0 points and led the Metro Conference in 3-point shooting percentage (43.8).
After the season ended, Sanders was mentally and physically exhausted.
“I had a Chevy Chevette parked on campus,” he said. “After we get back from Chicago, I go to my apartment, pack a bag and drive to Cleveland. I’m in my mother’s basement and I probably sleep for the better part of five or six days. I was just so exhausted because I gave everything I had. When the season was over I just needed to be at peace.”
Sanders has talked about that shot numerous times over the years, but only when he’s asked.
“Even to this day, I referee high school basketball and I get people at basketball games say, ‘Are you that Steve Sanders?’” he said. “I don’t mind talking about it, but I don’t run around saying, ‘Hey, I’m Steve Sanders, I’m the one that made the shot.’ I understand the importance of it and the effect that it’s had on so many people. It would be selfish of me to say I’m tired of talking about it or I don’t want to talk about it.”
Actually, he does bring it up to one person without being asked. That person is former UC player Eric Hicks, who was a 1,000-point scorer and a first-team all-Big East Conference selection in 2006.
“That’s my guy,” Sanders said. “I talk to Eric all the time. I tell him, 'Eric, you were a better basketball player than me, but I’m more famous than you.' I do it to aggravate him. I’m like, Eric, there’s a lot of people who don’t even know who you are, but they know who I am.”
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