The red hot Cincinnatti Bearcats held off two furious UConn comeback bids in the second half and eked out a 70-67 win for their 7th straight Big East road win. After Shabazz Napier tied the game with the second of two consecutive three point field goals with 10 seconds left, the Bearcats Sean Kilpatrick hit a trey with 2.9 seconds for the three point winning margin. The Huskies sorely missed Freshman Ryan Boatright when Cincy went with their four guard offense and bombed away from three point land; their front court players just could not defend adequately against the ubiquitous Bearcat Guards. For the second time this season Boatright had to sit out pending the NCAA's investigation of undisclosed new information which has emerged about
Boatright's violation of recruiting rules before his involvement with UConn.
The bearcat's were red hot in the first half, opened a 12 point margin and led at halftime by nine. When the Bearcat long range shooters cooled off in the second half after leading 48-37 the Huskies started exploiting the long rebounds after missed shots and went on a 15-2 run punctuated by an enormous Drummond dunk off a fast break, to take a 52-50 lead. However, with Lamb and Napier playing virtually the whole game and Giffey going 34 minutes with Boatright out and Olander injured the Huskies tired and fell behind by six coming down the stretch. For the last three minutes they fouled on every Bearcat possession and Napier hit the second of two dramatic threes to tie the game at 67 before Kilpatrick sealed their fate.
Once again, UConn fell into most of their scoring coming from the backcourt: Napier had a career high 27, Lamb added 14 and Giffey in another fine all around game had 10 on 4-6 from the floor. I would love to see him start shooting more. The huskies glaring weakness of little scoring from the front court was evident as Daniels was scorelss Oriakhi had 2, Smith 4, Olander 4-, and Drummond looking like a Freshman last night had 4- That is a total of 14 pts from the Huskies 5 big men- not a winning formula. This just has to improve for the Huskies to be a consistent threat against top flight opponents.
Interestingly, statistics show that Lamb scores at a much higher rate when Boatright is on the court than he is just paired with Napier. Jeremy has not been looking the part of a "go to guy" in tight games as he still can become too passive.
Sidenote: I have never been a fan of the Bearcat coach Nick Cronin. I see him as part of a new breed of coaches who feel that they can scream and yell at their players with humiliating impunity. After the well publicized brawl between Cincinnatti and Xavier on Dec. 10 Cronin was very critical of his players; I was outraged at his self righteous piousness when I felt that his rages have created an atmosphere in his team that allowed for this ugly fight. Apparently, so did someone upstairs at Cincinatti because he was clearly under orders last night to knock off the screaming and yelling. If you have ever been at any Bearcat games you know what I mean.
"You Heard it here First"
Steve
No comments:
Post a Comment