By Bill Koch
After UC announced last week that point guard David DeJulius had opted out for the remainder of the season, I received a text message from my panicked cousin in Virginia. She grew up in Cincinnati in the 1960s as a huge UC fan and maintains her strong allegiance to the program to this day.
“I just heard that DeJulius opted out,” she wrote. “Without him, we can’t even come close to competing.”
My cousin knows the game and it’s understandable why she was so pessimistic about the rest of the season. But in this case she appears to have been wrong.
In their next game, against Tulane, the Bearcats rolled to a 91-71 victory, clinching the victory with a lineup of three freshmen and two sophomores on the floor. They ran up and down the court with abandon and shot 55.9 percent in the second half, outscoring the Green Wave, 47-31. They lost Sunday, 80-74, against a much better Memphis team, but again played well when the youngsters were in there, closing the deficit to two points with 23 seconds left.
The way the Bearcats played in those two games reminded me of the UC-Wright State game on Dec. 14, 2011 at the Nutter Center in Dayton. It was their first game after the brawl at the end of the Xavier game six days earlier. Because the Bearcats were playing without suspended players Yancy Gates, Cheikh Mbodj, Octavius Ellis and Ge’Lawn Guyn, no one knew what to expect, not even the players.
Just when some UC fans might have been fearing the worst, the Bearcats turned in one of their strongest and certainly one of their most entertaining performances of the season, blowing past Wright State, 78-58, on national television.
“Everybody was waiting on us to explode and have a mental breakdown,” junior point guard Cashmere Wright said after the game. “We wanted to show everybody that we’re regular human beings and we make mistakes. We just came ready to play.”
UC, which entered the game shooting 41.5 percent from the field for the season, and averaging 62.2 points, looked like a different team – and not just because it was missing the four players.
“We came out and just played,” said Wright, who scored 12 points with eight assists. “Since we were small, we were just going out there and playing hard and leaving it all on the floor. Whatever happens, happens. Everybody was free to play their game and nobody cared. Coach just let us play.”
The Bearcats, who improved their record to 6-3, jumped out to a 17-2 lead behind three treys from Sean Kilpatrick, who scored a game-high 20 points – 17 in the first half – and were never seriously threatened by the Raiders, leading by as many as 26.
UC coach Mick Cronin said he purposely decided to spend the night in Dayton the night before so his players could spend time talking with each other in the hotel in an attempt to shake off some of the bad vibes from the Xavier game, “just try to get these guys laughing and make sure that they weren’t stressed out.” When the Bearcats took the floor for warm-ups. they didn’t appear to have a care in the world, even though they were only eight scholarship players strong.
“We said, this is going to be a watershed moment for us,” Cronin said. “We’ve got to come together. To be honest, we weren’t playing well regardless of what happened the other day. We struggled to come together with our upperclassmen and our freshmen and get on the same page all year. Unfortunately, it took a bad incident for that (to happen).”
Cronin started four guards – with JaQuon Parker starting in place of Gates. Making his first start of the season, Parker responded with 14 points. Justin Jackson (11) and Dion Dixon (10) also scored in double figures.
“We just took what the defense gave us,” Kilpatrick said. “We were just making plays for each other.”
Wright State coach Billy Donlon praised the Bearcats for their effort in the face of difficult circumstances.
“Sometimes in adverse conditions you find out the soul of a person,” Donlon said. “There’s no question, from an outside perspective, they’ve got a pretty passionate and admirable soul.
“When you play Yancy Gates and those guys together, they’re a little slower. Their rotations aren’t as quick.”
With the four-guard offense and more quickness on the floor, good shots were plentiful and UC made the most of them. The Wright State game, a seemingly insignificant stop on the schedule at the start of the season, turned out to be a turning point. When Gates and the others returned, they did their best to adapt to the new approach. The Bearcats finished the season with a 26-11 record, advanced to the championship game of the Big East tournament, then beat Texas and Florida State in the NCAA Tournament before losing to Ohio State in the Sweet 16. They haven’t returned to the Sweet 16 since that season.
Maybe the Bearcats’ performances against Tulane and Memphis will also turn out to be a turning point. Over the weekend, Mike Saunders Jr., given the chance to run the offense in the absence of DeJulius, put his considerable speed and quickness on full display. He scored a career-high 19 points against Memphis and gave UC fans who have been repeatedly frustrated during this Covid-marred season, a reason to hope.
“Mike Saunders is the future of our program,” UC coach John Brannen told the media after the game. “He’ll be one of the elite point guards here that we have at the University of Cincinnati. When he’s in, we move the ball. That ball pops. That’s the way I want to play.”
After UC announced last week that point guard David DeJulius had opted out for the remainder of the season, I received a text message from my panicked cousin in Virginia. She grew up in Cincinnati in the 1960s as a huge UC fan and maintains her strong allegiance to the program to this day.
“I just heard that DeJulius opted out,” she wrote. “Without him, we can’t even come close to competing.”
My cousin knows the game and it’s understandable why she was so pessimistic about the rest of the season. But in this case she appears to have been wrong.
In their next game, against Tulane, the Bearcats rolled to a 91-71 victory, clinching the victory with a lineup of three freshmen and two sophomores on the floor. They ran up and down the court with abandon and shot 55.9 percent in the second half, outscoring the Green Wave, 47-31. They lost Sunday, 80-74, against a much better Memphis team, but again played well when the youngsters were in there, closing the deficit to two points with 23 seconds left.
The way the Bearcats played in those two games reminded me of the UC-Wright State game on Dec. 14, 2011 at the Nutter Center in Dayton. It was their first game after the brawl at the end of the Xavier game six days earlier. Because the Bearcats were playing without suspended players Yancy Gates, Cheikh Mbodj, Octavius Ellis and Ge’Lawn Guyn, no one knew what to expect, not even the players.
Just when some UC fans might have been fearing the worst, the Bearcats turned in one of their strongest and certainly one of their most entertaining performances of the season, blowing past Wright State, 78-58, on national television.
“Everybody was waiting on us to explode and have a mental breakdown,” junior point guard Cashmere Wright said after the game. “We wanted to show everybody that we’re regular human beings and we make mistakes. We just came ready to play.”
UC, which entered the game shooting 41.5 percent from the field for the season, and averaging 62.2 points, looked like a different team – and not just because it was missing the four players.
“We came out and just played,” said Wright, who scored 12 points with eight assists. “Since we were small, we were just going out there and playing hard and leaving it all on the floor. Whatever happens, happens. Everybody was free to play their game and nobody cared. Coach just let us play.”
The Bearcats, who improved their record to 6-3, jumped out to a 17-2 lead behind three treys from Sean Kilpatrick, who scored a game-high 20 points – 17 in the first half – and were never seriously threatened by the Raiders, leading by as many as 26.
UC coach Mick Cronin said he purposely decided to spend the night in Dayton the night before so his players could spend time talking with each other in the hotel in an attempt to shake off some of the bad vibes from the Xavier game, “just try to get these guys laughing and make sure that they weren’t stressed out.” When the Bearcats took the floor for warm-ups. they didn’t appear to have a care in the world, even though they were only eight scholarship players strong.
“We said, this is going to be a watershed moment for us,” Cronin said. “We’ve got to come together. To be honest, we weren’t playing well regardless of what happened the other day. We struggled to come together with our upperclassmen and our freshmen and get on the same page all year. Unfortunately, it took a bad incident for that (to happen).”
Cronin started four guards – with JaQuon Parker starting in place of Gates. Making his first start of the season, Parker responded with 14 points. Justin Jackson (11) and Dion Dixon (10) also scored in double figures.
“We just took what the defense gave us,” Kilpatrick said. “We were just making plays for each other.”
Wright State coach Billy Donlon praised the Bearcats for their effort in the face of difficult circumstances.
“Sometimes in adverse conditions you find out the soul of a person,” Donlon said. “There’s no question, from an outside perspective, they’ve got a pretty passionate and admirable soul.
“When you play Yancy Gates and those guys together, they’re a little slower. Their rotations aren’t as quick.”
With the four-guard offense and more quickness on the floor, good shots were plentiful and UC made the most of them. The Wright State game, a seemingly insignificant stop on the schedule at the start of the season, turned out to be a turning point. When Gates and the others returned, they did their best to adapt to the new approach. The Bearcats finished the season with a 26-11 record, advanced to the championship game of the Big East tournament, then beat Texas and Florida State in the NCAA Tournament before losing to Ohio State in the Sweet 16. They haven’t returned to the Sweet 16 since that season.
Maybe the Bearcats’ performances against Tulane and Memphis will also turn out to be a turning point. Over the weekend, Mike Saunders Jr., given the chance to run the offense in the absence of DeJulius, put his considerable speed and quickness on full display. He scored a career-high 19 points against Memphis and gave UC fans who have been repeatedly frustrated during this Covid-marred season, a reason to hope.
“Mike Saunders is the future of our program,” UC coach John Brannen told the media after the game. “He’ll be one of the elite point guards here that we have at the University of Cincinnati. When he’s in, we move the ball. That ball pops. That’s the way I want to play.”
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