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By Bill Koch
GoBearcats.com
CINCINNATI - Just five games into the season, it's far too early to be worrying about NCAA Tournament possibilities, but it's not too early to understand how much one bad loss at home can hurt you down the line.
The University of Cincinnati Bearcats were facing the very real possibility of absorbing just such a loss Wednesday night, when they trailed Samford by 16 points with 4:07 left in the first half after the Bulldogs went on a stunning 24-0 run.
The Bearcats (4-1) came alive with a 9-0 run of their own during the final 3:46 of the first half, then outscored Samford, 16-4, to start the second and eventually pulled away to defeat the Bulldogs, 70-55, before 7,422 fans at Fifth Third Arena.
"They came out and they had a great run and it was looking ugly for a minute but we came out in the second half and we were like, c'mon we're gonna keep fighting," said junior forward Kyle Washington. "We were gonna get it done regardless. It was a good test for us."
Samford (2-2) was picked to finish seventh in the Southern Conference but looked nothing like a seventh-place team in the first half when it made seven of 14 shots from 3-point range. Four of those treys were by guard Triston Chambers.
During the Bulldogs' run, the Bearcats didn't score from the 11:19 mark of the first half until Nysier Brooks made a layup with 3:46 left. At one point during that drought they missed nine straight shots.
"That's just basketball," said senior guard Kevin Johnson. "Samford put on a tough run for us. You just have to face adversity. You have to get through it, calm down and figure out your defense, make some shots and let the game play out the way it's gonna play out.
"Congratulations to Samford for making shots and being a tough team tonight. Whether they were open looks or tough shots, Samford made them. Kudos to them for making them. It's tough to make shots against the Bearcats and they did it."
Despite playing only 22 minutes because of foul trouble, Washington led UC with 18 points and 12 rebounds, his fourth double-double in five games. He picked up three fouls in the first half, which limited him to nine minutes on the floor.
"I made a few mental errors at the beginning of the game," Washington said. "Coach explicitly told me not to go for a block with just my left hand, opening up, and that's exactly what I did, so I think I suffered a penalty for that one."
Gary Clark scored 13 points with seven rebounds; Jacob Evans scored 12 points with seven rebounds; Johnson scored a season-high 10 points and Brooks added a season-high 10 points with four rebounds and three blocked shots in 15 minutes. He was 4-for-5 from the field. Brooks had scored a total of three points in UC's first four games.
"Nysier, I thought, was huge," said UC coach Mick Cronin, "especially to start the second half, playing the first eight minutes without Kyle where we were able to make a run, so that's a huge positive. He's got that in him. He was a huge bright spot for our team."
So was Johnson, who has gotten off to a slow start this season. He entered the game having made only four of 17 shots this season and was two of 13 from long range.
"I'm just trying to stay with it, stay confident," Johnson said. "I got sick a couple weeks back and I'm just trying to stay with it, play defense and be a vocal leader for my team, listening to coach, not worrying about it and getting out of the slump."
Cronin said that both Johnson and senior point guard Troy Caupain, who's also off to a slow start, need to relax.
"They both want to have great senior years," Cronin said. "When they miss a shot, their body language, you can just see it. You can't play that way. You've got to move on to the next shot. Both of them, I think, put too much pressure on themselves to make every shot they take."
In the end, Cronin said, it was defense that saved the day for the Bearcats after what was shaping up as a disastrous first half and perhaps a hard-to-explain home loss come tournament time.
"We hadn't seen zone," Cronin said. "Their zone bothered us. We let missed layups and missed open shots affect our energy level in the first half. It's dangerous in basketball to let your offense affect your defensive energy and that happened for us. If you want to know why we won the game in the second half, we only made one three. It was defense and rebounding. We had 16 second-chance points in the second half and we held them to 20 percent from the field. That was the difference."
The Bearcats also received a nice assist from the crowd.
"I thought our home crowd for the first time in a long time, maybe because we don't trail much like that here, I thought they really helped our comeback," Cronin said. "They stayed with the guys and I thought they really tried to be a legitimate sixth man and that was nice to see."
Bill Koch covered UC athletics for 27 years - 15 at The Cincinnati Post and 12 at The Cincinnati Enquirer - before joining the staff of GoBearcats.com in January 2015.