There is always a swagger about Cincinnati, which is the very definition of “in your face.” It is primal and simple and assertive in its approach, and all season long it took on opponents with a basic man-to-man defense.
There were no tricks involved and rarely even any traps, the Bearcats all but screaming out, “Beat us if you can.” This was their way, and they prided themselves on it while holding opponents to 37.5 percent shooting.
But all that changed 10 minutes into Saturday’s Conference USA tournament championship game against Marquette. As in their previous two meetings, the Golden Eagles used their quickness to gain an early upper hand, and after falling behind by three points, the Bearcats switched to a 2-3 zone.
“I don’t like to use a zone,” Cincinnati coach Bob Huggins said after a 77-63 victory that may have cemented a No. 1 seed for the Bearcats (30-3) in the NCAA tournament. “I like to line up and play people.”
Both teams were playing their third game in three days.
“There was no possible way we were going to have enough energy to chase them for 40 minutes,” Huggins said. “It’s well documented that they run a great offense. They run so many things that we could have stopped if we were rested. But I was afraid we were going to run out of gas. So you do what you’ve got to do to win.”
Huggins’ nod to practicality turned the game around. For this was no passive zone the Bearcats played; it was as active as a trendy restaurant on a Friday night and tenacious enough to rob the Golden Eagles (26-6) of their advantage in quickness and their offensive rhythm and their ability to operate inside.
“It was effective to a degree,” Marquette point guard Cordell Henry conceded, but that was like saying Chicago winters are unpredictable to a degree. The Golden Eagles made only four of their last 20 first-half shots against the zone and wound up shooting 33.8 percent (22-for-65) for the game.
Henry had a particularly rough time. The 5-foot-10-inch senior went scoreless in the first half, didn’t have a bucket in the first 24 minutes and shot 3-for-15 overall, including 1-for-6 on three-pointers.
Dwyane Wade scored 16 and Travis Diener had 15 for Marquette, and they had to work for every point.
The Bearcats got 26 points from Conference USA player of the year Steve Logan and 12 each from Leonard Stokes and Immanuel McElroy.
As might be expected in a rubber game between the league’s most spirited rivals, the last 10 minutes were as combustible as a chippy hockey game.
With the Bearcats leading by 22, Henry started a drive to the basket and was called for traveling. After the whistle his momentum carried him into 6-11 Donald Little. Their collision left Henry crumpled on the floor and Little looming over him like a boxer who had just scored a knockout.
That began the extracurriculars, which continued as the game rumbled on to its now-obvious conclusion. Marquette’s Jon Harris clipped Little with an elbow as they emerged from a scrum underneath. Marquette’s Scott Merritt leveled Logan on a drive to the basket, which produced an angry exchange.
Cincinnati’s Jason Maxiell took the air out of Henry with a well-placed fist to the solar plexus. Henry and Logan, the smallest men on the floor, were jawing at each other down to the last minute.
“Man, we go back seven years,” Logan finally said to a wary official. “Don’t worry about it.”
Henry observed: “It was just a physical game. That’s the way it is when competitors go at it.”
Huggins, too, said it was all in the game.
“When you play as hard as these two teams play, when you play as physical as these two teams play, sometimes you lose your temper a little bit,” he said. “But I didn’t think there was any chance whatsoever that it was going to get out of control.”
Marquette coach Tom Crean was hardly as cavalier. He paused a full 10 seconds before commenting when asked about the physical chess match he had lost.
“They won today. They deserved that,” he finally said. “It was a physical game. We’re going to watch the film and go from there.”
