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By Bill Koch
GoBearcats.com
CINCINNATI - The University of Cincinnati Bearcats said a temporary goodbye to Fifth Third Arena on Thursday night the same way they said hello to it 28 years ago - with a victory.
But unlike the first game played in the arena, which resulted in a 2-point UC win on a last-second shot in 1989, this one was was a blowout 65-47 victory over Houston before a sellout crowd of 13,176, nearly 5,000 more than the Bearcats attracted in their inaugural win over Minnesota.
"It was a great way to close out Fifth Third Arena against a team that's been playing extremely well," said UC coach Mick Cronin. "To dominate the game the way we did, defensively we were as good as we've been in a long, long time. The guys did a tremendous job. Our effort was off the charts tonight."
Fifth Third Arena will now be shut down to undergo an $87-million renovation. The Bearcats, who are 385-79 in 28 years in the arena, will return in 2018 with a 26-game winning streak in the building.
Seniors Troy Caupain, Kevin Johnson and Zack Tobler were honored before the game on Senior Night and left the game to individual ovations in the closing seconds.
"Everybody thought, Troy, he's gonna cry," said Caupain, who scored 11 points in his last UC home game. "I actually thought I was, but when I was walking out (before the game), before they called Zack's name, I was like man, I'm not gonna cry because I can't have them all clowning on me for crying. I just held it in as best as I could."
The 18th-ranked Bearcats (26-4 overall, 15-2 in the American Athletic Conference) finished the season undefeated at home for the fourth time in arena history with an 18-0 record. They also clinched the No. 2 seed in next week's AAC Tournament in Hartford, Conn. Houston fell to 20-9, 11-6 after having won seven of its previous eight games.
Gary Clark led UC with 14 points and seven rebounds. Freshman Jarron Cumberland added 10. The UC defense forced 10 Houston turnovers in the first half and limited the Cougars to 37.5 percent shooting while holding them 28 points below their scoring average. Rob Gray, the leading scorer in the AAC at 20.3 points per game, led Houston with 17, but scored 11 of them in the final 7:55 when the outcome had long been decided.
UC used a 15-2 run at the end of the first half to take 37-20 lead at intermission and never let Houston back in the game, building a 26-point lead with 8:57 remaining.
The Bearcats started the game on a nice note when Tobler scored UC's first points on a layup while making his first career start. Houston then jumped out to a 5-2 lead, but it didn't last long. UC took its first lead at 7-5 with 16:27 left in the first half and didn't trail again.
Tobler found out about three minutes before the game that he would start. At that point, Caupain, who made the pass into the post to set him up, had already decided he would make it his mission to help Tobler score the first points of the game.
"I told him before we walked out, when I come off this screen, if you give me a hard duck, I'm gonna give you this ball, so post him up hard," Caupain said. "We reversed it to Kyle (Washington). He wasn't open and he swung it right back. Tobes had a nice duck-in. He held him off like I knew he was gonna do - over the top, layup, that's a bucket."
"Troy threw me a great pass," Tobler said, "so I had to get him the assist."
Because the Bearcats dominated the game so thoroughly and perhaps unexpectedly given the way the Cougars have played of late, there was ample opportunity for the crowd to soak in the nostalgia of the moment. As fans walked into the gym they noticed that the 1961 and 1962 national championship banners had already been taken off the south wall as part of the preparation for the soon-to-begin construction.
After the game, confetti streamed down from the rafters and a gathering of former players, including several from the 1992 Final Four team, had their pictures taken with the current players.
Even the usually hard-edged Cronin couldn't resist a little tug at his heart strings.
"I've never felt nostalgic," Cronin said. "Going out for my first game coaching here I was thinking about getting a win. I was younger, I was crazier than I am now. I'm not a guy that thinks about cool stuff. I'm not a nostalgic guy at all. I'm probably not the most lovey-dovey human, but I thought about it. I didn't get teary-eyed, but I thought, this is pretty neat, this really is happening. I've been begging for this for eight years and it's happening."
Johnson, who scored seven points with four assists and keyed the Bearcats' run at the end of the first half with his defense, probably understood what the arena has meant to the UC program better than any of his teammates because he grew up in Cincinnati. He talked after the game about what his four years at UC have meant to him.
"I'm always gonna come back here so it's a little different for me," he said. "This team has a different kind of bond and chemistry, one through 13. I just know in the back of my mind that there won't be nothing like it ever again in life. That's gonna be the toughest part for me, when I really get to sit down and think about the four years, everybody I met here, just the fans, the love the support and definitely the teammates and my coaches, I'm gonna love them forever."
Surely Tobler will always remember the night he scored the first two points in the final game of this version of Fifth Third Arena, then finished off the victory when he scored UC's final point with a free throw with 41 seconds remaining.
"The key to the game," Cronin said, "was the first play, getting Zack a low-post touch."
ATTENDANCE NOTE: The sellout crowd was UC's fourth of the season and boosted attendance in the final year of this version of the arena to 177,575, an average of 9,865, the largest average during Cronin's 11 years as head coach. During its 28 years, Fifth Third Arena has drawn 4,870,200 fans for an average of 10,496.
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.