BY MIKE DeCOURCY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
He is a returning starter who has never played a game. This may be the best way to describe what Pete Mickeal has been to the Cincinnati Bearcats in his first month of Division I basketball.
He has two years of junior college behind him, but the wide-open, carefree style typically played at that level has not handicapped Mickeal's transition to playing for coach Bob Huggins.
"He's the best I think we've had at how quickly he picked things up," Huggins said, placing only junior center Kenyon Martin and former Bearcats forward Keith Gregor in the same company.
"Pete's got an aptitude - he understands the game. I think we all have aptitudes for different things. When you tell him stuff, he conceptual izes very well."
Mickeal, a 7 6-foot-7 junior who will start for UC at small forward in Thursday's season opener at Rhode Island, made two free throws to give UC a last-second victory in its second preseason game. He averaged 15 points and 8.5 rebounds in the two exhibitions.
Ask him what has been most difficult about his time at UC, and Mickeal thinks for a moment. There has not been a great adjustment. "When I first started, I had a problem sitting down and guarding," Mickeal said.
To sit down on defense is to be positioned in a low defensive stance, where it is possible to react more quickly to a player's move.
Huggins recalls only once, maybe twice, when he's yelled at Mickeal. That was for not moving quickly in transition defense. It is a measure of his stability UC trusts Mickeal enough to have him defend Rhode Island's 6-10 sophomore Lamar Odom, who is averaging 14.7 points, 9.3 rebounds and 7.3 assists.
Rhode Island (2-1) is expected to have back point guard Preston Murphy, who missed two games with an injury. That would take Odom away from handling the ball full-time, but he still presents playmaking skills to challenge Mickeal.
"I want to be out there every minute, shutting people down," Mickeal said. "You play great defense, it creates offense. That's me."
A member of two NJCAA championship teams at Iowa's Indian Hills Community College, Mickeal chose UC over Iowa State and Saint Louis because of the relationship he developed with assistant Mick Cronin and the desire to play for Huggins. He first saw Huggins sitting along the baseline when Mickeal competed at a junior college talent camp in July 1997.
"I was scoring a lot, so I couldn't help but keep seeing him," Mickeal said. "He was shaking his head like, 'Man, I want him.' " He is pleased to be at UC because of its no-nonsense approach to the game.
"In junior college, they'll tell you if you don't do things, you're coming out of the game, but ... they need you out there. These guys will do it," Mickeal said.
SATTERFIELD SIGNS:
Point guard Kenny Satterfield of New York City has signed a letter of intent to play basketball for Cincinnati.
Satterfield averaged 16 points, four rebounds and six assists per game last season as a senior at Rice High in the Bronx.
HORTON AILING:
Senior guard Michael Horton sat out Tuesday's practice with the flu.
Huggins expects Horton to play Thursday, but he also is bothered by a foot injury. If Horton does not start, Alvin Mitchell is the likely replacement.
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