BY PAUL DAUGHERTY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
AUBURN HILLS, Mich. - They were never quite right. Not from the minute Danny Fortson's imposing form covered the front of the Sports Illustrated magazine issue that proclaimed Cincinnati the nation's best college basketball team.
Not from the last second of their second game, when Xavier's Lenny Brown broke their confidence with a running jumpshot in the lane that beat the Bearcats at home. A shot that was eerily, ironically similar to the one Damon Flint missed Saturday, that would have put UC up on Iowa State with 11.4 seconds to play.
The Bearcats were never as complete as they might have been, never as together as you'd expect a veteran team to be.
Too little, too late
The Bearcats talked better than they played. Right to the end, saying they'd prove wrong those who suspected their pedigree. Perhaps because they needed convincing themselves.
But March is not the time to be correcting mistakes made in December, or to be kindling the sort of confidence the good teams manage in the NCAA Tournament as a matter of habit.
In the end, nothing mattered but a disappointing end to a season once so promising. Iowa State defeated UC, 67-66, yesterday. The game came down to a foul called against UC beneath the Cyclones basket, a play that didn't go the Bearcats' way. It was a fitting end to a messy season.
With 34.1 seconds left, Darnell Burton grabbed a loose ball, then fell to the floor. It appeared Iowa State's Kenny Pratt tripped him. Referee John Cahill called traveling on Burton.
''(Pratt) fell on my leg,'' Burton said. ''He grabbed my ankle. That's what made me fall. The ref said I fell on purpose.''
Replays showed Pratt tripped Burton. ''Sickening,'' was UC guard Melvin Levett's reaction.
Thusly reprieved, reserve forward Klay Edwards banked in a jumphook to give the Cyclones a one-point lead.
After a timeout with 11.4 seconds to go, UC tried to run a play for Ruben Patterson, but Patterson drew two defenders. Flint drove the lane and launched a jumper that glanced the front of the rim. Then, Flint's half-court heave at the buzzer smacked hard off the backboard. It resonated, loud and hollow, just like the end of UC's strangely unsatisfying season.
''We showed signs of greatness all year,'' Levett said. ''We never could sustain it. It hurts to know we could have been special.''
The harder they fall
It was a measure of the Bearcats collective talent that they hung in against Iowa State; it was also a show of their flaws that they didn't win.
The Cyclones go only seven players deep; one of the seven, center Kelvin Cato, missed 11 minutes because of foul trouble. But they were smart, and well coached. Tim Floyd is suggested as the next coach of the Chicago Bulls. We found out why Saturday.
Floyd decided to make a sandwich of UC's Danny Fortson: Pratt in front of him, hands in Fortson's face, Cato bumping him from behind. His players would barely guard the likes of Bobby Brannen and Jackson Julson.
In effect, Floyd told the Bearcats which one of them would shoot the ball.
And Brannen had a superb day, making 7 of 10 shots. But as good as he was, UC won't win any games in which Brannen is the star. The sandwiched Fortson finished with 16 points and just three rebounds, none in the second half.
Meanwhile, Iowa State's Dedric Willoughby was cutting around screens to drain three-point field goals. This was a familiar sight to anyone watching the Bearcats during the last month.
Lessons unlearned finally caught up to them. A team can only take so much noise. All the suspensions, the inconsistency, the failure to behave the way a preseason No. 1 team should behave, in practice and during games, came home ugly here Saturday.
The erstwhile Number Ones fell hard. Sad, but not shocking.
You can call Enquirer columnist Paul Daugherty at 768-8454.
