Even after losing Gary Clark, Jacob Evans III and Kyle Washington, despite the seemingly every nerve-wracking game throughout the regular-season and first two games in the conference tournament, the Queen City’s basketball team, the Cincinnati Bearcats, are the kings of the chess match that is the American Athletic Conference for the second straight year. Who would have thought the Bearcats would be the undisputed champions of the American Athletic Conference after the loss to Ohio State, ECU or Houston? It just shows how far this Bearcats team has come and the toughness and resilience factors that are there with it.
Think about where we were just over a week ago after getting blown out against Houston. For me, at least, I was at such a low point it was surreal, looking back on it. The Bearcats had just wrapped up a week where they lost two games in a week where they controlled their destiny to clinch at least a share of the regular-season title. They promptly dropped both games. I thought going into the week they were a team of destiny. They were winning all the close games, something they struggled with last year.
Here’s what I wrote last week after the game against Houston:
Here’s the hope I have. Last year the Bearcats were winning heading into March. That winning made you think not once about losing the way they did in the NCAA Tournament. This year, the losing in March has already happened. But there’s still some basketball left to be played. I completely understand when Mick Cronin referenced in his postgame press conference yesterday how Bob Huggins used to say that it’s never okay to lose. But in light of losing yesterday, it didn’t come at the worst of times. Another thing to note is that the Bearcats closed the regular-season with six games in a 17-day span. That’s an average of one game per every three days. Maybe the Bearcats were exhausted this week, and that’s why they put up the subpar performances they did. After all, they beat UCF in a rock-fight earlier in the regular-season and only lost by seven to Houston on the road. The loss to Houston yesterday was the worst it could have been. There is hope going into postseason play, but I still just don’t know what to expect and what’s going to happen with this Bearcats team.
Right now the Bearcats have momentum going into the NCAA Tournament, and those games are no different than the conference tournament games. Both kinds of games are played on a neutral floor and it’s a survive and advance scenario. And they didn’t look exhausted in Memphis. Jarron Cumberland is back to who he was in the middle of the regular-season and Cane Broome is becoming that source of secondary scoring to we all thought he would be for this Bearcats team.
Speaking of Cumberland, he and Cincinnati showed as much enthusiasm and excitement and enjoyment of playing with one another as I have seen all season. They have nothing to prove to anybody because they weren’t supposed to be in this position, and I think the players just love playing with one another. This Bearcats team has been fun to watch because of that and their conference tournament championship wasn’t expected.
It felt great driving back from Memphis after winning the conference tournament. That is until about 8:30 p.m.. We were 120 miles west of Nashville, making great timing, and then we hit traffic. I looked at the route on my phone, and the red line on the map indicating traffic was going on for multiple miles. We already weren’t going to get back to Cincinnati until about three or 3:30 a.m., but this traffic was pushing that arrival time back even further. I though at the rate we were going, about 6 miles in 90 minutes we moved through the traffic, that we would hit early-morning rush-hour traffic in Cincinnati, and I was dead serious when I mentioned that. Did I mention I did not bring the free hotel stay I have?
Eventually cops led us to an exit still over 100 miles outside of Nashville. Alright, great, at least I could finally use the restroom and get gas in the car. Well, I guess one thing leads to another because the bathroom inside the gas station was closed. No big deal, that’s what the woods on the side of the building was for. But I still couldn’t wash my hands and none of us thought to bring hand sanitizer.
Then we tried to get back on I-90 East toward Nashville. I had noticed there was a police car on the entrance ramp, so I didn’t know for sure if I was going to be able to actually get back on. But it didn’t hurt to at least ask the policeman what was going on, right? Wrong. His response to when I asked him what was going on was something along the lines of “Do you see a car parked here?” Yes, I did. But, again, it just didn’t hurt to know what was going on. When I said that, he just told me to back up to the main road. No explanation. Maybe I should have just inferred to not go near the police car, but I just wanted to know whether or not we could get back on I-40 to try and get back at a reasonable hour. In short, that policeman would fit right in with the New England Patriots because he was in no mood to elaborate on whatever was going on.
So then we finally decided to utilize the “Ways” app to get us around the accident and the apparent shutdown of the interstate, and that was 30 minutes of driving on winding roads in the middle of nowhere late at night. Eventually, I drove from Nashville all the way back to Cincinnati arriving at 5:30 a.m.. Madness to say the least.
A year ago yesterday, I was on a bus back from “That Game in Nashville.” Everything that happened that night was just a blur thinking about it now, and I don’t need to rehash everything that happened. Last night, though, I drove back to my hometown of Springboro, Ohio from the Mick Cronin Radio Show at Montgomery Inn at the Boathouse a day after the Bearcats won the conference tournament, As I have said, what a difference a year makes. Hopefully the Bearcats in the NCAA Tournament turns out the same way.
Let me be Frank and Cut to the Chase 