Monday, December 20, 1999Loss shows UC where it must improve
BY MIKE DeCOURCY
The Cincinnati EnquirerThere are only five more shopping days until Christmas, and a few more hours to enjoy to the sound of this: the No.1-ranked Cincinnati Bearcats.
They won't be No.1 when the Associated Press poll comes out this evening, but that shouldn't matter nearly as much over the course of their season as the obvious but manageable flaws exposed in the Bearcats' 66-64 loss to Xavier in Saturday night's Skyline Chili Crosstown Shootout.
“We've got many more ballgames to play,” said forward Kenyon Martin. “This was one game. This one hurt, but we've got to go out and play. Of course we would like to win, but we didn't.”
There is something about having a No.1 ranking that makes many want to believe in your greatness. A few impressive performances, some nice highlights on ESPN and suddenly there are basketball followers — who ought to know better — wondering if you'll ever lose a game.
This will happen to Stanford now. The Cardinal are without its star senior forward, Mark Madsen, who has a hamstring injury. The best Stanford player is a freshman, guard Casey Jacobsen, who averages 12 points.
Does this sound like a powerhouse? It will by tonight, when the Cardinal likely take over the No.1 ranking. The thing is, excellence is not designated, it is earned.
These are some areas UC must address if it is to return to the top:
• Depth. UC is developing the same sort of problem that afflicted UNLV in 1991 and Duke in 1999. Those teams kept their rotations to six or seven players because the drop-off to the next substitute seemed too great.
It was a mistake for those teams, and it will be for UC if center Donald Little and guard Leonard Stokes do not get the opportunity to contribute.
Little can be undependable on the court, but He has played only a combined 10 minutes against Mississippi Valley State, Saint Louis and Xavier following an impressive showing against North Carolina. Stokes hit a 3-pointer against Carolina, but has played 20 minutes since. UC needs to be able to use more than seven players at this stage.
• Power. Huggins split the power forward minutes almost evenly between seniors Jermaine Tate and Ryan Fletcher. Although Fletcher has become important as a deep shooter and Tate did a marvelous defensive job in helping to hold XU's David West to five points, neither made the necessary contributions to the interior offense and on the boards.
Tate has gone four games without getting more than three rebounds. He hasn't reached double figures this season. Fletcher has nine rebounds in the past two games, but only one at the defensive end.
• Pacing. Every UC loss in the past two seasons ended with the Bearcats scoring fewer than 65 points. With that statistic easy to discover, any opponent attempting to run with them deserves the defeat it's bound to absorb.
The Bearcats did push the ball when Kenny Satterfield was at point guard. They were so tentative against the Xavier zone, however, their offensive gifts were muted.
Other teams likely will attempt to zone UC, but it's a mistake to think that move alone is the answer. This team has better and more confident shooters who have found themselves uncomfortable in a difficult atmosphere. They will get plenty of opportunities to examine their mistakes against XU.
• Composure. Before the Xavier game, UC never showed any signs of believing the hype. The Bearcats showed up for their previous eight games ready to compete, which is why they averaged a 19-point advantage at halftime. It didn't matter if the opposition was North Carolina or Mississippi Valley State. They were ready. But they weren't ready at the Cincinnati Gardens.
Of all the things that make the Shootout special, the most mysterious is how few opposing fans wind up in the audience when this game is played. If it's at the Shoemaker Center, it's a red sea. It's blue at the Gardens.
With the minimal distance between schools, it would seem a few thousand from the other side would manage to squeeze into the crowd and even out the decibel level. That never happens. And the Bearcats allowed that to matter.
It is one thing to face an unfamiliar zone and try to rapidly discover a means of attacking it. It's another to do so knowing any wrong decision will be met with a cacophony of delight.
Over the course of the season, that shouldn't matter so much. The Bearcats may play only once or twice more in such an atmosphere — at UNC Charlotte, and perhaps at Louisville. Compared to the noise XU's fans generated Saturday, Saint Louis' Kiel Center and its reported 15,000 fans were positively funereal.
The Bearcats displayed resilience by recovering from an 11-point deficit in such a difficult atmosphere. But they did not execute as well in the final 90 seconds, and will need to improve.
“We lost, bottom line, it's over,” said forward Pete Mickeal. “We can't do anything to get it back. If you lose a game like this, other times will try to do the same thing they did. You've got to go back and do some things you could have done better, work hard in practice to improve on that.”
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