Wednesday, March 15, 2000
Huggins: No pressure from past
BY MIKE DeCOURCY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Coach Bob Huggins doesn't want to hear about the second round, and not simply because he has a first-round game to play first.
Whatever the college basketball universe thinks about the Cincinnati Bearcats' failure to advance past the NCAA Tournament's second round in the past three years, Huggins claims not to care. It bothered him deeply to have the 1997, 1998 and 1999 seasons end when they did, but not because those tournament defeats created another weapon the program's critics could use against UC.
“That's all garbage,” Huggins said. “Who feels pressure to get past the second round? That's garbage. That doesn't have anything to do with us.
“We go one at a time and play our behinds off every time we go play. And that's all you can do. I don't think they felt any pressure. I didn't feel any pressure.”
UC's current circumstance has altered the meaning of the second round in this tournament. With Naismith Trophy winner Kenyon Martin out for the season with a broken leg, they are working to improve and survive, not to validate their regular-season accomplishments to those who would assail their accomplishments.
The Bearcats no longer can accommodate the conceit of jinxes or curses or psychological barriers. Each day presents a new effort to reinvent themselves as a basketball team. They cannot be concerned about how they'll be perceived if they don't arrive in the Sweet 16 next weekend.
“We're working hard; we want to show people we can do it without him,” said guard Steve Logan. “He's telling us we can do it without him. So it's a big test for us now. A real big challenge.”
UC (28-3) opens the tournament Friday with a 12:30 game against 15th-seeded UNC Wilmington (18-12) in Nashville. Huggins said the Bearcats' first three practices without Martin were uniformly excellent, with the players paying greater attention to precision now that they cannot rely upon their leading scorer, rebounder and shot-blocker.
The Bearcats are working harder at perimeter screens to free jump shooters such as Logan and DerMarr Johnson for long-range shots. They also are focusing on quick moves into open spaces by the players setting the screens; Ryan Fletcher, Pete Mickeal and Donald Little have the mid-range shooting ability to turn well-executed pick-and-roll plays into scores.
These are the kinds of details that preoccupy UC now, and there is a benefit in that. They recognize the failure to create a new cohesion could end their season.
“I'm thinking harder about getting past the second round,” Mickeal said. “I've been waiting for this moment for almost a year now.”
The second-round issue has been unavoidable for the players since last season's loss to Temple in Boston, even though the Bearcats held the No. 1 record through 12 weeks of the 1999-2000 regular season and won 28 of their first 30 games. There were frequent suggestions their success would cease with the close of the Conference USA season.
“Everywhere you go,” Logan said, “if you meet a few guys, you'll hear, "You guys are good in the regular season, but when it comes to the second round, you guys are jinxed. Stuff like that. It's hard, tough taking that. You've got to throw some things out the window and just go on.”
Presuming UC makes it to the second round, there's a good chance the Bearcats will play seventh-seeded Tulsa (29-4) Sunday. No team in the tournament has more victories than the Golden Hurricane, which makes that matchup seem hardly a bargain for a No. 2 seed.
Tulsa's four losses — three of them to Fresno State — were by a combined seven points. However, Tulsa was only 2-3 against the top 50 teams in the Ratings Percentage Index standings. UC was 11-2. The other potential second-round opponent is 10th-seeded UNLV, a team the Bearcats beat by 40 points at the Shoemaker Center in January.
“They read that stuff and they hear that stuff so much that after a while, you have to react to it,” Huggins said. “But I don't feel any pressure about that. We were the best team in the country. We may still be. Let's go play.”
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