Today's game
Who: Minnesota (4-3) at UC (4-2)
When: 9:30 p.m.
Where: Shoemaker Center
Line: UC by 6 1/2
TV: ESPN.
Radio: WLW-AM (700).
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What Lenny Brown, Gary Lumpkin and their Xavier teammates did to D'Juan Baker looked like a nightmare. It might have been followed by more that evening, if only Baker had been able to sleep.
He played the whole thing over in his mind after Saturday's Crosstown Shootout, counting the turnovers until he reached eight, recalling how he dribbled himself away from open shots and toward the XU defense time and again. Three days later, Baker still had not watched the tape of the Cincinnati Bearcats' 20-point loss to the Musketeers, but he remembered every detail.
''I'm always thinking what I could have done better, what I should have done,'' Baker said. ''If I got by one person, they were sending two or three others. I'm going to have to be expecting people to come at me like they were. I have to learn to play under that kind of pressure.''
Baker and the rest of the Bearcats (4-2) begin the repair work on their reputation 9:30 p.m. today at the Shoemaker Center in a game against Minnesota (4-3), which also has fallen far and fast. The one positive for UC in its loss to Xavier was that only the Cincinnati market saw the game on television. The Minnesota game will be shown nationally by ESPN, to an audience that did not see Baker, who averaged 26 points entering the game, shoot only three times and score three points against the Musketeers.
It was a performance that disappointed Baker, as well as UC coach Bob Huggins, who wondered last season if the talented shooting guard would have the mental toughness to be a dependable player for the Bearcats.
''It's a long year,'' Huggins said. ''It wasn't all his fault. We didn't get him the ball in position where he could do something with it. And he didn't work hard enough.''
That one game dropped Baker from No. 5 in the NCAA in scoring to No. 18, at 22.2 points, but he is not concerned about what happened to his individual statistics. If that were an issue, he would have started firing when the game became one-sided.
Instead, he he shot only once after his first attempt was deflected and his second was rejected.
''My team got nothing from me,'' said Baker, a senior captain. ''And that's not good, coming from a leader. They took me out of the offense, and that hurt us.''
Against Xavier, not only did Baker pass up open three-point jumpers, he did not look for open teammates when he chose to dribble into the defense.
''Bottom line, I hurt the team. I can't do that anymore,'' Baker said. ''Next time, I'm going to shoot it. I wasn't getting myself ready to shoot. That really had a lot to do with it.''
A year ago, both Minnesota and UC ranked among the nation's top 10 teams. The Bearcats began the season on top of the Associated Press poll and ended with a Conference USA title. Minnesota did not enter with universal respect but built itself into the Big Ten champion and a No. 1 NCAA seed, ending its year in the Final Four.
The Gophers this season have lost three games at home, the first time that happened since 1960-61. They are without forward Courtney James, who left school for a European pro league after encountering legal problems, and guard Charles Thomas who transferred, as well as guard Bobby Jackson and center John Thomas, who were seniors last year.
Minnesota has had no one score consistently, with expected star Sam Jacobson shooting 34 percent from the field and 29 percent on three-pointers. But UC can't count on the Gophers continuing to struggle.
''We're trying to straighten out whatever things we can straighten out in the short time we have,'' Huggins said. ''We got beat by a good basketball team. You sit and worry about that, you get beat on Wednesday.''
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