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By Bill Koch
GoBearcats.com
CINCINNATI - The 25th-anniversary celebration of the University of Cincinnati's 1992 Final Four team was more than just a chance for UC fans to cheer the players from that team during a halftime ceremony. It also afforded the current players with a chance to hear some sage advice from the old veterans.
The Bearcats talked to the current players for about 15 minutes after their pre-game shoot-around Saturday morning and told them how much they liked their team - their togetherness, their unselfishness and their passion for the game.
Fueled by those words of praise, the Bearcats went out and blew past American Athletic Conference rival Connecticut, 82-68, before a sellout crowd of 13,428 at Fifth Third Arena, getting a career-high 27 points from Kyle Washington and a double-double of 20 points and 11 rebounds from Gary Clark.
It was a rare blowout win in a series where the games usually come down to the final few minutes or seconds.
"We just knew we had to come out regardless of their record and be ready to play because they're a good team," Clark said.
No. 14 UC (21-2 overall, 10-0 in the American) extended its winning streak to 14 games and its home winning streak to 22. Undermanned UConn (10-12, 5-5) saw its modest three-game winning streak come to an end.
Freshman Jarron Cumberland scored 15 points off the bench for the Bearcats, who shot 58.6 percent in the second half and made 12 of 26 3-point shots. Sophomore guard Jacob Evans, UC's leading scorer with 14.1 points per game, failed to score for only the second time in his UC career, despite playing 30 minutes. Rodney Purvis led UConn with 20 points.
The Bearcats never trailed and led by 26 points with 9:36 left in the second half, but lost their intensity defensively in the final five minutes, allowing the Huskies to get within 12. For UC coach Mick Cronin, those lapses were symptomatic of a subpar overall defensive effort.
"Kyle and Gary made a lot of shots and we had 22 assists," Cronin said. "Offensively, we were pretty efficient today, but defensively I'm extremely disappointed. I don't just look at the scoreboard, I look at the deflection board and we only had 18. Kyle had none. Jacob had one. We quit playing after we got up 26. A coach is never going to be happy with that. We play Connecticut again late and if we don't play 40 minutes, we'll lose at UConn. I can promise you that."
Washington scored UC's first six points and eight of its first 10. By the 9:06 mark of the first half he had 13 points and UC had a 17-11 lead. The Bearcats extended their lead to 10 at 25-15 with 4:31 left. The Huskies knocked down a couple of 3-pointers and cut the UC lead to six with 56 seconds left before Clark snared an offensive rebound and punctuated the first half with a dunk to give the Bearcats a 34-26 halftime lead.
UConn trimmed UC's 8-point lead to six in the opening minutes of the second half, but the Bearcats responded. A Washington 3-pointer spread the lead to 11. scored eight straight points - on two 3-pointers and a follow shot - to give the Bearcats a 54-35 advantage with 13:47 remaining.
With UC leading, 58-41, Cumberland scored eight straight points on a 3-pointer, a layup and another 3-pointer that banked in off the glass. After Washington added another three, the Bearcats held a 69-43 lead, their largest lead of the game, with 9:36 left.
"The toughness just wasn't there today," said UConn coach Kevin Ollie. "We've got to get back to the drawing board. You can't allow the bigs to dominate the way they did, and they dominated the whole game from inside and outside."
UC's Clark was just as troubled as Cronin by the way the Bearcats seemed to let up defensively for the last five minutes, especially after what they had heard earlier in the day from the Final Four Bearcats.
"As a team, we let them get like three straight threes," Clark said. "To finish a game, you've got to finish it and not let things like that happen. You just can't allow it. Those guys just want us to keep going and stick to the details because in the long run if you don't fix those details, that's how you lose."
That's exactly what had Cronin miffed despite the victory UConn, the Bearcats' third win over the Huskies in their last four meetings. Their 18 deflections were less than half of their goal of 40 for every game.
"If have a game with 18 deflections that's not in this building, we will lose," Cronin said, "we'll be done in March. If we get in the NCAA Tournament and have a game with 18 deflections or have a game with Jacob Evans not scoring and he only has one deflection, we will lose. Period. We'll lose.That's exactly what I told those guys."
Cronin was pleased that the Final Four players had a chance to talk to his current players because he has so much respect for the way they played the game.
"The thing about that team, the reason they won so much besides talent is that they had intangibles," Cronin said. "They knew why they won. They didn't force the ball to Gibson. Gibson knew he was a defender. They didn't force the ball to Terry Nelson. Those guys knew basketball then and they know basketball now."
None of the current UC players was even born back in 1992, but they respected what their predecessors had to tell them.
"We're trying to do something that they did," Washington said. "It's nice to hear what they went through because they were in the same shoes that we are."
Washington and Clark both said they were particularly impressed by Anthony Buford, a shooting guard on the '92 team who played with a killer instinct.
"What was the guard's name?" Washington asked.
"Buford," Clark said. "You could tell in his voice, the way he talked. He was so calm, it was almost like one of those movies like The Equalizer."
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.