By Bill Koch
It’s not an exaggeration to say that just about everyone who was a UC basketball fan on the day that Kenyon Martin broke his leg remembers where they were on March 9, 2000 when they heard the news.
My daughter, Heather, called it one of the worst days of her young life. She was a seventh grader at St. Ignatius grade school in Monfort Heights. The gym was set up for the school’s science fair, so her class couldn’t use it that day for phys ed.
“I was walking to where we were going to have gym class and the eighth graders were walking out, and all these eighth grade boys kept asking me if I was OK,” Heather said. “I was like, I’m fine. I was the last one to walk into the room where we were having gym class. I open the door and everyone turns around and looks at me. I still didn’t know what happened at that point. I think it was my gym teacher who told me what happened. I don’t think I cried, but she was making us go outside to play kickball and I didn’t want to go.”
Heather is 33 today, in her 12th year as a teacher at St. Ignatius. She told me the story of how she found out about Martin just a short while after she had received her second Covid-19 vaccine. She stood in line next to the same gym teacher who broke the sad news to her that day.
Where were you that day?
As the sports columnist for the Cincinnati Post, I was sitting courtside at the Pyramid in Memphis, staring in disbelief when I saw Martin go down early in the game against Saint Louis. I figured at first that everything would probably be OK. Martin would eventually get up, maybe spend some time on the bench, and then return to the game.
But Martin knew instantly he had broken his right leg and that his UC career was over.
“The broken leg wasn’t the issue,” Martin told me when I interviewed him in 2013 just before he was inducted into UC’s James P. Kelly Athletics Hall of Fame. “I tore all my ligaments in my ankle. It was devastating. When it happened, I knew something was seriously wrong right away. I knew it wasn’t just a regular sprain. The only thing that was going through my head was, not now, not now. We came too far. We’ve been through all this and I worked so hard and grew up to where I was. This can’t be happening. Not now.”
As UC fans know all too well, the Bearcats were the top-ranked team in the country and took a 28-2 record into their quarterfinal game of the Conference USA tournament, favored to win their first national championship since 1962. Here’s how my friend and Post colleague, Rodney McKissic, described the play that ended Martin’s college career and the Bearcats’ national title hopes:
“Kenyon Martin was standing in the high post preparing to set a screen, something he’s done thousands of times. On the way, Martin ran into Saint Louis guard Justin Love and in an instant college basketball’s premier player crumbled to the floor in pain.
“Martin’s ankle turned underneath him as he fell, breaking his right fibula and damaging several ligaments. As soon as Martin motioned to the Cincinnati bench for help, the Pyramid crowd grew silent.”
With a soft cast fastened around his leg, Martin was helped off the court by UC trainer Jayd Grossman and Dr. Angelo Colosimo, UC’s orthopedic surgeon. Martin requested that his sister, Tamara, accompany him to the hospital. Together, they were transported to Campbell’s Clinic, where Martin’s diagnosis was confirmed.
“He’s going to overcome this,” Tamara said later outside the UC locker room. “That’s the type of person he is.”
Martin returned to the Pyramid before the end of UC’s 68-58 loss to the Billikens and watched from behind the Bearcats’ bench with his right leg propped up on a chair. After the game, he sat in the locker room and patiently answered reporters’ questions.
“If I have to pay my own way, I’m going to the NCAA Tournament,” he said. “This is my family. I have to be there for them. I still can win (a national championship). I just can’t play. I can still get a ring. We can still get a banner put up in the gym.”
At the hospital, Martin had urged the doctors to work fast so he could get back to the Pyramid. He wanted to show his teammates that he would continue to support them in the tournament.
“There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that we were the team to beat,” Martin said. “Losing in the second round the previous three years, I was determined it wasn’t going to happen that year and I was going to be the reason why.”
But without Martin, the Bearcats were eliminated from the NCAA Tournament in the second round for the third straight year. They beat North Carolina-Wilmington in the first round before losing to Tulsa.
“Everything changes without him,” UC coach Bob Huggins said. “The biggest thing missing without Kenyon was when guys were in the wrong place. He would put them in the right spot. He conceptualizes the game so well.”
DerMarr Johnson was a freshman on that team. He played only one year at UC before he became a lottery pick in the 2000 NBA draft. When he returned to UC to work on his degree in 2017 while assisting then-UC coach Mick Cronin as a student assistant, I asked him about that day.
"It was really crushing because we depended on (Martin) so much,” Johnson said. “It’s hard to compensate for that much. It kind of took a lot of heart out of us. Kenyon did so much defensively and offensively for us, and it happened so late in the year, we just didn’t know how to adjust to it that fast.“
That summer, despite his injury, the New Jersey Nets made Martin, the Associated Press National Player of the Year, the first overall selection in the NBA draft. He spent eight weeks on crutches, but achieved his goal of being ready in time for the first day of training camp on Oct. 1. He played 15 seasons in the NBA.
The Bearcats have played in 14 NCAA Tournaments since 2000, but have advanced past the second round only twice – in 2001 and in 2012. Both times they lost in the Sweet 16.
The game in which Martin was injured remains one of the two most crushing losses in UC history, perhaps behind only the 1963 national title game loss to Loyola of Chicago.
Where were you on March 9, 2000 when you heard the news?
It’s not an exaggeration to say that just about everyone who was a UC basketball fan on the day that Kenyon Martin broke his leg remembers where they were on March 9, 2000 when they heard the news.
My daughter, Heather, called it one of the worst days of her young life. She was a seventh grader at St. Ignatius grade school in Monfort Heights. The gym was set up for the school’s science fair, so her class couldn’t use it that day for phys ed.
“I was walking to where we were going to have gym class and the eighth graders were walking out, and all these eighth grade boys kept asking me if I was OK,” Heather said. “I was like, I’m fine. I was the last one to walk into the room where we were having gym class. I open the door and everyone turns around and looks at me. I still didn’t know what happened at that point. I think it was my gym teacher who told me what happened. I don’t think I cried, but she was making us go outside to play kickball and I didn’t want to go.”
Heather is 33 today, in her 12th year as a teacher at St. Ignatius. She told me the story of how she found out about Martin just a short while after she had received her second Covid-19 vaccine. She stood in line next to the same gym teacher who broke the sad news to her that day.
Where were you that day?
As the sports columnist for the Cincinnati Post, I was sitting courtside at the Pyramid in Memphis, staring in disbelief when I saw Martin go down early in the game against Saint Louis. I figured at first that everything would probably be OK. Martin would eventually get up, maybe spend some time on the bench, and then return to the game.
But Martin knew instantly he had broken his right leg and that his UC career was over.
“The broken leg wasn’t the issue,” Martin told me when I interviewed him in 2013 just before he was inducted into UC’s James P. Kelly Athletics Hall of Fame. “I tore all my ligaments in my ankle. It was devastating. When it happened, I knew something was seriously wrong right away. I knew it wasn’t just a regular sprain. The only thing that was going through my head was, not now, not now. We came too far. We’ve been through all this and I worked so hard and grew up to where I was. This can’t be happening. Not now.”
As UC fans know all too well, the Bearcats were the top-ranked team in the country and took a 28-2 record into their quarterfinal game of the Conference USA tournament, favored to win their first national championship since 1962. Here’s how my friend and Post colleague, Rodney McKissic, described the play that ended Martin’s college career and the Bearcats’ national title hopes:
“Kenyon Martin was standing in the high post preparing to set a screen, something he’s done thousands of times. On the way, Martin ran into Saint Louis guard Justin Love and in an instant college basketball’s premier player crumbled to the floor in pain.
“Martin’s ankle turned underneath him as he fell, breaking his right fibula and damaging several ligaments. As soon as Martin motioned to the Cincinnati bench for help, the Pyramid crowd grew silent.”
With a soft cast fastened around his leg, Martin was helped off the court by UC trainer Jayd Grossman and Dr. Angelo Colosimo, UC’s orthopedic surgeon. Martin requested that his sister, Tamara, accompany him to the hospital. Together, they were transported to Campbell’s Clinic, where Martin’s diagnosis was confirmed.
“He’s going to overcome this,” Tamara said later outside the UC locker room. “That’s the type of person he is.”
Martin returned to the Pyramid before the end of UC’s 68-58 loss to the Billikens and watched from behind the Bearcats’ bench with his right leg propped up on a chair. After the game, he sat in the locker room and patiently answered reporters’ questions.
“If I have to pay my own way, I’m going to the NCAA Tournament,” he said. “This is my family. I have to be there for them. I still can win (a national championship). I just can’t play. I can still get a ring. We can still get a banner put up in the gym.”
At the hospital, Martin had urged the doctors to work fast so he could get back to the Pyramid. He wanted to show his teammates that he would continue to support them in the tournament.
“There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that we were the team to beat,” Martin said. “Losing in the second round the previous three years, I was determined it wasn’t going to happen that year and I was going to be the reason why.”
But without Martin, the Bearcats were eliminated from the NCAA Tournament in the second round for the third straight year. They beat North Carolina-Wilmington in the first round before losing to Tulsa.
“Everything changes without him,” UC coach Bob Huggins said. “The biggest thing missing without Kenyon was when guys were in the wrong place. He would put them in the right spot. He conceptualizes the game so well.”
DerMarr Johnson was a freshman on that team. He played only one year at UC before he became a lottery pick in the 2000 NBA draft. When he returned to UC to work on his degree in 2017 while assisting then-UC coach Mick Cronin as a student assistant, I asked him about that day.
"It was really crushing because we depended on (Martin) so much,” Johnson said. “It’s hard to compensate for that much. It kind of took a lot of heart out of us. Kenyon did so much defensively and offensively for us, and it happened so late in the year, we just didn’t know how to adjust to it that fast.“
That summer, despite his injury, the New Jersey Nets made Martin, the Associated Press National Player of the Year, the first overall selection in the NBA draft. He spent eight weeks on crutches, but achieved his goal of being ready in time for the first day of training camp on Oct. 1. He played 15 seasons in the NBA.
The Bearcats have played in 14 NCAA Tournaments since 2000, but have advanced past the second round only twice – in 2001 and in 2012. Both times they lost in the Sweet 16.
The game in which Martin was injured remains one of the two most crushing losses in UC history, perhaps behind only the 1963 national title game loss to Loyola of Chicago.
Where were you on March 9, 2000 when you heard the news?
Memphis right behind the basket - 30’ away. He just lost his footing... awful memory.
ReplyDeleteMemphis right behind the basket - 30’ away. He just lost his footing... awful memory.
ReplyDelete