Maybe there should be a rule against tipping off a basketball game before lunch. Certainly this was a tough game to digest for DePaul.
In a game that sometimes threatened to degenerate into a foul-o-rama, had frequent scoring droughts and three technicals, including the ejection of Blue Demon LeVar Seals, Cincinnati’s rugged defense and rebounding deflated DePaul’s Conference USA tournament title hopes with a 55-50 triumph Saturday at U.S. Bank Arena.
Cincinnati (24-6) ended DePaul’s six-game winning streak and halted the Blue Demons from winning their first league postseason tourney.
The harsh loss in its lowest-scoring game of the season devastated DePaul (21-9), which is awaiting its first NCAA bid since 2000.
“It’s real disappointing when you come this far,” an emotional Drake Diener said. “You only get so many chances to win a championship game in your life. We let this one slip.”
The Bearcats, who were playing in a home-like atmosphere before 13,787 fans, gobbled up the Blue Demons early with a voracious defense that shuttered DePaul’s offensive sets.
Cincinnati neutralized DePaul forward Andre Brown (six points on 1-of-5 shooting) and constructed a 14-point lead in the first half.
“They played a typical grind-it-out game and that’s how they like it,” DePaul coach Dave Leitao said.
Yet Cincinnati’s dominance eroded in the second half as DePaul, known for battling back, got within five points just 9 1/2 minutes into the half and got within four at the end.
Each time, however, the Blue Demons missed critical shots–going 1 of 12 from three-point range–perhaps from the weariness of playing three games in three days.
“I don’t really think it was the legs,” said DePaul forward Delonte Holland, who scored a team-high 17 points. “Shots didn’t fall. I don’t want to make any excuses.”
The Blue Demons, who split regular-season games with Cincinnati en route to a five-way share of the regular-season crown, shot 35.3 percent and were outrebounded 37-26, a rarity, while scoring seven points fewer than in any other game this season.
“Cincinnati is a good defensive team,” said DePaul forward Quemont Greer (13 points), who along with Holland made the all-tournament team.
It was 42-34 Cincinnati when an incident between Tony Bobbitt, Cincinnati’s star sixth man, and Seals, DePaul’s backcourt defensive specialist, occurred near the Cincinnati bench.
Bobbitt, who was named the tournament’s most valuable player after his 17-point game Saturday, collapsed writhing. Seals was tossed from the game, accused of leveling Bobbitt with a punch below the belt.
Afterward Seals said, “my emotions got the best of me.” But he characterized the situation as hard contact, saying he did not throw a punch and said he was exiled, “I guess because of how he fell. To me he was faking.”
Leitao said officials told him Seals threw a punch. Leitao said “anything like that has no place in the sport” although he added the officials should have controlled trash-talking better and earlier.
Cincinnati coach Bob Huggins said only that he knows Leitao runs “a class program.”
If Seals’ act is defined as a fight, he will be suspended automatically from DePaul’s NCAA first-round game, which will be announced Sunday.
DePaul athletic director Jean Lenti Ponsetto said Conference USA Commissioner Britton Banowsky is studying tape and will confer with her Monday.
Although the Blue Demons overcame a slow start to win 14 of their last 17 games, they felt the defeat keenly.
“You really want to win,” Holland said. “You practice 1,500 makes a day in the summer all for the last two minutes.”
The last two minutes, like the first 20, belonged to Cincinnati.
