Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 23, 1992 TAG: 9203230009
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK SPORTS COLUMNIST
DATELINE: DAYTON, OHIO LENGTH: Medium
That's because the Bearcats, who left the Metro after last season and won the first Great Midwest Conference Tournament, don't look or play the same as coach Bob Huggins' first two Cincinnati clubs.
"It's different because we have different people, new people," said junior Allen Jackson, who went from the Bearcats' starting point guard to a backup midway through the season. "It's a closer group because we all came in since Coach Huggins has been here. We use the bench, we play hard and we play together."
The remnants of the sour Tony Yates-coached years are gone, and Huggins has brought immediate success with transfer talent. The Bearcats don't have a freshman on the 27-4 club that used defense - as usual - to stop Michigan State 77-65 in Sunday's Midwest Regional second-round game at Dayton Arena.
Huggins uses nine players at least 14 minutes per game. Of those, only senior forward Herb Jones and Jackson started in the Metro a year ago. Now, Jones starts with Akron transfer Anthony Buford, a senior shooting guard, and three junior-college transfer juniors - agile 6-foot-10 center Corie Blount, forward Terry Nelson and point guard Nick Van Exel.
The backups are Jackson; center Jeff Scott, who is at his third Division I school; junior college transfer Erik Martin; and junior Tarrance Gibson, the only high school recruit among the regulars.
Huggins is the same intense sideline bouncer who was Metro coach of the year in 1990. The 38-year-old coach has restored the glory to a program that had five straight Final Four trips from 1959-63, including titles in '61 and '62.
"Coach is tough all of the time," Jackson said. "He demands the best of us, and he makes no bones about it.
"When you should start worrying is when he's not yelling at you because it's then if you wonder if he doesn't care about you. He's up front. He tells you on your recruiting visit he's going to be on you hard."
Cincinnati, which hadn't had an NCAA victory since 1975 - those Bearcats were the first Metro tournament champions - uses its "amoeba" defense to trap at three-quarter, side-court and half-court spots.
"The secret to our defense is that half the time we don't know what we're doing," Jackson said, laughing. "There are so many ways we can go, depending on where the ball goes, that it's easy to make a mistake.
"The easiest way to explain it is that we try to get in the passing lanes and play people physical in double-teams. We couldn't do that until this year because we didn't have the quickness we needed."
Early in the season, Huggins was down on his retooled team's effort in practice one day, so he sent the Bearcats to the locker room to consider their goals. Jackson said they wanted to win the Great Midwest regular-season and tournament titles, go no worse than 23-4 in the regular season and reach the NCAA's final eight.
Cincinnati, ranked 12th nationally and seeded fourth in the Midwest Regional, tied DePaul for the regular-season conference crown, won the tournament and matched its 23-4 desires. Now, they are one win from their ultimate goal.
"If you can defend and rebound, you can be in every game," Huggins said after Sunday's victory. "We've done that for the most part. Still, we're not a good basketball team if we're not attacking the goal. We have to do that to be any good."
The NCAA regional that starts Friday at Kemper Arena in Kansas City, Mo., perhaps should be renamed the Great Midwest Regional. Besides Cincinnati, which meets Texas-El Paso, another Metro transfer to Cincinnati's league, Memphis State, plays Georgia Tech.
Another of the Metro departees, Florida State, also is in the Sweet 16 as one of four ACC members to advance that far.
"The Metro and the Great Midwest are about the same as leagues," Jackson said. "Playing Louisville and those Southern Miss teams with [Clarence] Weatherspoon in the Metro was a lot like playing DePaul and UAB [Alabama-Birmingham] in our new league, and we're still playing Memphis.
"Having played in the Metro helped because there wasn't any slack-off going into another league. If we'd come from an easier league, maybe we wouldn't have been able to compete at the level we have.
"If we had been in the Metro, we'd have been very tough to beat, too."
by CNB