TicketsHicks' Double-Double Leads Bearcats To Win
Junior scores 19, grabs 11 boards in win at USF
Contact: Brian Teter
1/27/2005
Eric Hicks had his eighth career double-double in UC's win over USF. |
TAMPA, Fla.---No. 20 Cincinnati held USF to 26 percent shooting and got a double-double from Eric Hicks as the Bearcats scored a 74-48 win over the Bulls in Conference USA action on Thursday night at the Sun Dome.
Hicks scored a team-best 19 points, while also grabbing a game-high 11 boards to record the eighth double-double of his career and fifth of the season. The win extends the Bearcats record to 16-3 overall and 5-1 in C-USA play, keeping UC in a share of first place in the league race. USF falls to 8-9 and 1-5 in C-USA.
Brian Swift scorched Cincinnati for a game-high 27 points, but the Bearcats were able to hold USF leading scorer Terrence Leather scoreless, as the senior battled foul trouble all game long. Leather, who entered the contest ranked third in C-USA with 18.8 points per game, played only 12 minutes on the night, including just nine seconds in the second half before fouling out.
Two other Bearcats joined Hicks in double figures, as Armein Kirkland scored 12 and Jihad Muhammad dropped in 10, with the latter?s total all coming in the second half. UC shot .429 from the floor, while winning the rebound battle by a 46-41 count. The Bearcats are now 11-0 this season in games in which they outrebound their opponent.
"That's really what we've done all year," UC head coach Bob Huggins explained. "This is not one of our best offensive teams, but considering our lack of size inside we've really done a good job defensively."
Nothing went right for the Bulls in the first half as the Bearcats limited the home team to just 5 of 30 (.167) shooting from the field in the first 20 minutes of play. UC also forced nine first half turnovers, while shooting nearly 44 percent before the break. Compounding the problems for the Bulls was Leather?s foul trouble as the 6-9 senior picked up his third foul with 5:23 to play, before getting number four just 55 seconds before the break.
UC started the evening off sluggish, leading by just three at the under 12 minute media timeout. But it was coming out that break that the Bearcats came alive, as Hicks and Roy Bright led a commanding 11-0 run. Bright scored the first seven points of the spurt and Hicks added four more, as the latter?s lay-up with 6:50 to play put the Bearcats up 21-7.
USF got a three-point basket from Marius Prekevicius that snapped a five-plus minute scoreless drought and followed that 1:30 later with a lay-up by Swift. But that bucket with 5:07 to play would prove to be the Bulls? last field goal of the half, as the Bearcats closed the stanza on a 13-3 run to take a 37-15 lead into the break. The Bulls? scoring output was the lowest point total surrendered by the Bearcats in any half this season.
Coming out the halftime stoppage, the Bulls looked like a different team, as they scored 10 of the first 14 points of the half to cut the Bearcat lead to 16. With 10:16 remaining, USF head coach Robert McCullum re-inserted Leather into the ball game, only to see him foul Chadd Moore nine seconds later for his fifth and final foul of the game.
With Leather done for the night, Swift continued to carry the Bulls? scoring load, just as he did in the last match-up with the Bearcats on Feb. 11, 2004. On that night, he dropped in 23 points, a total he would surpass in tonight?s contest. With 7:10 to play, Swift knocked down his third triple of the night, cutting the USF deficit to 51-37.
But as they had done in the first half, Cincinnati once again broke the home team?s back with another dominant run, this time going on a 14-3 spurt that opened up a 25-point cushion with just over two minutes remaining. Down the stretch, Huggins called a timeout with 1:30 to play to get his reserves into the contest and senior walk-on guard John Meeker promptly responded. The fan favorite erupted for five points in the last minute of play, knocking down his second three-pointer of the year and missing a career-high by just one point.
The win was UC?s 14th in a row over USF, dating all the way back to a Bulls? win in 1988. The contest also marked the final regular season battle between the schools as members of C-USA. Both Cincinnati and USF are slated to move to the BIG EAST for the 2005-06 season.
The Bearcats, in the midst of a stretch of three of four games on the road, will return home on Saturday to battle Houston at Fifth Third Arena. Tip-off is set for 7 p.m. It will then be back on the road for the Bearcats, as they make stops next week in Louisville (Feb. 2) and Charlotte (Feb. 5).