TicketsGameday edition of the Breakfast today for the final road game of the season. Tonight, at Marquette (18-11, 9-7), 8 p.m. It's on ESPN3.com only. Here's the link. (H/t Tommy G)
The Bearcats have been road warriors of late. They've won four of the last five on the road and three in a row. Amazingly, the team that opened the year with the 13-game home winning streak endured its most frustrating defeats there.
Yet, on the road, most of the season's important victories were forged.
After opening conference play losing the first three road contests, and handily, some change occured. Cashmere Wright had a theory when I asked him about it yesterday.
"I just think we focus more," he said. "We just block everything out and realize we are a family when we are on the road and all we depend on and play hard as a team."
This team responds to the "us against the world mentality" as well as anybody in the country. Whether in the week after the St. John's loss or playing the no-respect card every step of the 15-game win streak to open the season, it's been a common thread to success.
Adopting that approach for road games was when the switch flipped, Wright said.
"I think it was after the St. John's game, the meeting we had with Coach Cronin and said we are all we got," Wright said. "If people around here don't believe in us, your friends and family, believe in yourself and your teammates and play hard for them. I think we got people in there with chips on their shoulders that just want to prove to other people that they are good and want to be here."
That bodes well for tonight; the oddsmakers have the Bearcats as six-point underdogs.
Let's eat...
--- A few newsworthy tidbits in relation to tonight's game came out of yesterday's media availability. The first I relayed into a short blog post yesterday on the response of the team following the UConn loss, particularly that of Wright, who took the brunt of some criticism after the game.
Cronin seemed pleased with his team's reaction on Monday, but admitted the workout was light.
--- Bill Koch updated Rashad Bishop's status. He's still feeling his toe injury but will play. The quesiton is how much pain can he tolerate.
Bishop has become the heart of this team down the stretch. If he is hampered, it would be a significant blow to the Cats.
--- The Bearcats are running into Senior Night at Marquette. That normally would be an obstacle, but the Golden Eagles haven't won on Senior Night under Buzz Williams. They fell in OT to Notre Dame two years ago and OT to Syracuse last year, both by one posssession.
Marquette beat writer Todd Rosiak detailed those woes and Williams' opinion on the Bearcats.
--- Jon Rothstein documents the correlation between Williams and Cronin, battling through the middle of the pack in a league full of Hall-of-Fame coaches.
Great piece. It includes this quote from Rick Pitino, which I mentioned a few weeks ago.
"I love Mick and he's my buddy, but he needs to stop caring what people think about his team," Pitino said last week. "I don't think Cincinnati's an NCAA tournament team. I know they're an NCAA tournament team."
--- Marquette's been living on the bubble for a while now. Games like tongiht are commonplace. Of course, the same could be said about the Bearcats. I asked Cronin about that yesterday.
"We've been dealing with that for a month. You really start thinking about 11 teams making the NCAA tournament out of a conference. Every time you tee it up that is what you are dealing with. It forces you to be sharp at all times, it's taxing on your team. Hopefully, it makes your team better in the long run. Hopefully for everybody come March, we just want to be a part of it and hopefully we'll be all better when we don't have to play each other anymore.
So, has it made his team better?
"Oh yeah," Cronin said, "but I think it would be nice to play a non-Big East team."
This brought back our old friend the non-conference-schedule debate. It had been a while and he looked like he gained some weight. Regardless, Cronin started talking about experts not realizing the truth about his conference schedule.
"It's a funny thing about scheduling; everybody seems to have their great opinion about our schedule. What the national pundits don't seem to realize is nobody has invited Cincinnati to the Jimmy V, the Preseason NIT, to Coaches vs. Cancer. We got in Maui because Louisville pulled out. I had been begging the Big East office to help me get in a tournament like that."
Not sure if this was a plea for selection folks holding his OOC against him to see a deeper truth or just going off on a tangent as Cronin has a tendency to do. Bottom line, he's only stating fact.
And it continued.
"I would love to play Duke home and home on national television," Cronin said."I think Coach K would probably like to play in the Garden. It'd be great to play Texas on CBS the first weekend in February, but you got to win games, you got to get your program re-established to get that kind of stuff. We are working toward that."
We'll see how much progress has been made when the schedule comes out after the season.
--- Many parallels exist between UC and Marquette. One would be the senior presence on the Golden Eagles. They have four major contributors in the senior class, though, arguably their best players, Darius Johnson-Odom and Jae Crowder, are both juniors.
Rosiak talked about their story.
You could say the same about Rashad Bishop, Larry Davis, Darnell Wilks and Ibrahima Thomas with Yancy Gates, Dion Dixon and Wright as the better players.
--- Bubble boys Alabama, Virginia Tech, Baylor and Illinois all lost big games. And the bubble gets softer. Good news in regards to UC's cushion.
The biggest factor to watch the next two weeks will be mid-major bid stealers. Luke Winn runs through the eight most dangerous.
--- Brendan Prunty of the Newark Star-Ledger handicaps the 11 Big East teams that could make the NCAA tournament.
--- Do you want to know too much about the conference tournaments? Do you not have a job or hobby to fill your time? Card Chronicle put together a 5,000 word thesis on championship week.
It also gives a shout out to my Ohio Bobcats, who are on fire in March -- again -- and beat up UC Football SID Ryan Koslen's Akron Zips by 35 points last night.
--- I mentioned the remarkable UC women's win against Marquette yesterday. What I forgot to mention was senior Shelly Bellman who played 35 minutes and had 12 points, 8 rebounds, 8 assists and buried a go-ahead 3-pointer from the corner in the final minutes did so with a serious shoulder injury. Incredible.
--- Every other site will be talking about this, but I'd be remiss if not linking to this great piece of journalism by SI investigating crime among college football players.
--- On to some randomness...
--- A herd of goats made their way onto I-5 in California. Chaos ensued. I imagine it felt like every single time I take I-75 anywhere in town.
--- It's difficult to find any randomness that doesn't involve Charlie Sheen, who has taken over the universe. Though, I do like Sports Pickle's take.
--- Any time an event occurs at Marquette I always think about one of my favorite lines from Anchorman: "Baxter, is that you? Bark twice if you're in Milwuakee!"
Enjoy the game tonight, we'll be discussing it at length here tomorrow.