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By Bill Koch
GoBearcats.com
CINCINNATI – As he walked to the locker room to address his players at halftime, University of Cincinnati coach Mick Cronin knew the Bearcats were in for a rough time in the second half after they let SMU whittle a 15-point lead down to seven.
"I don't care if it's basketball or football," Cronin said. "Whenever you should be up by double figures at halftime and you've controlled the game and you've let a team come back and cut the lead to seven, you're not gonna keep making every shot, you're not gonna shoot 50 percent from three the whole game."
Actually, UC almost did exactly that, making 12 of 26 from long range, but in the end it was a hard-fought rebound by Kyle Washington and a key deflection by Kevin Johnson – the kind of dirty work Cronin admires so much - that helped the Bearcats hold onto a 66-64 victory over the Mustangs on Thursday night before 11,344 fans, the largest crowd of the season at Fifth Third Arena.
No. 22 UC (14-2 overall, 4-0 in the American Athletic Conference) won its 18th straight home game. SMU fell to 14-4, 4-1, and saw a 10-game winning streak come to an end.
Gary Clark led UC with 18 points – 12 in the second half – on eight-of-nine shooting and made two of three shots from long range. Senior point guard Troy Caupain scored 16 points, led UC with seven rebounds, handed out six assists, and did not commit a turnover in 37 minutes. Sterling Brown scored 20 points and pulled down 11 rebounds to lead SMU.
The Bearcats led, 66-61, after two free throws by freshman guard Jarron Cumberland with 2:35 to play and still held that advantage with a minute to go. SMU's Jarrey Foster then made a 3-pointer to cut the lead to two and after Jacob Evans missed a three for UC, the Mustangs had a chance to tie or take the lead. But Brown missed a three and after Ben Moore missed a follow shot, Washington secured the rebound with 4.1 seconds left.
Moore fouled Washington but the Bearcats weren't in the bonus, so they took the ball our of bounds. This time the ball went to Evans, who was fouled and went to the line to shoot the one-and-one bonus with four seconds left. Evans missed the free throw and Semi Ojeleye rebounded for SMU. With three seconds left, he was promptly fouled by UC's Kevin Johnson, who knew the Bearcats had fouls to give.
The Mustangs inbounded the ball only to have Johnson knock it away out of bounds with 1.1 seconds left. SMU then threw the ball toward mid-court where it was batted down by the Bearcats. Brown picked it up and heaved a shot toward the basket, but the officials ruled that time had expired before he released the shot.
In that situation, Clark said, the Bearcats were trying to assume the role of a defensive back.
"Everybody's ready to just read on the ball," he said. "It's gonna be a floating ball and everybody has to react to it. We were all communicating back there - me, Troy and Jacob - just to try to bat it back into our end or try to get hand on it."
The Bearcats, who led for all but a minute and six seconds, took control of the game with a 16-0 run that erased a 12-11 deficit and gave them a 27-12 lead with 8:04 left in the first half on the strength of some impressive 3-point shooting.
"They hit a lot of shots," said SMU coach Tim Jankovich. "If you look at the tape, I'm sure you'll see a lot of NBA range threes. They just had a great shooting night. It's going to happen."
But even when they were lighting it up from long range, the Bearcats never believed they were on their way to an easy win.
"Going up 15, that was just a run that we would have at home," Caupain said. "They're a great team and we knew that it would be hard to just blow them out. They play hard basketball. They load the box heavy and it's hard to get easy baskets.
"When they got back in the game we shot five jump shots and missed all five of them. Coach got on us when went into the locker room. We gave up two late-half buckets and he was like, this game isn't a blowout. They're not just gonna lay down for us. We can't just lose momentum like that and lose focus."
The Mustangs, one of the best rebounding teams in the country, entered the game with a margin of plus 20 in conference games, then proceeded to out-rebound the Bearcats, 37-27, with 13 offensive rebounds to UC's four, outscoring UC, 12-7, in second-chance points.
But Cronin said it could have been a lot worse.
"We did a good job boxing them out," he said. "They missed 39 shots (including free throws) and only got 13 offensive rebounds. For them, that's way below their percentage. The problem is we only had four offensive rebounds."
Evans, who averages 15.1 points per game, had a rough night, scoring only two points on one-of-10 shooting and missing the key one-and-one that could have sealed the game with four seconds left. But his teammates picked up the slack, with Johnson scoring nine points and Washington chipping in with 11 points and five rebounds.
The Bearcats had a sub-par outing in the deflection department with only 15, well below their goal of 40, but Johnson came up with a key deflection when they needed it and UC's defensive backfield took it from there.
"We've got a saying in the locker room that I'm not gonna tell you," Caupain said, "but basically it's that you don't let nobody come into your street and take over your street. That's how we were thinking."
uBill 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.