TicketsBy Bill Koch
GoBearcats.com
GEORGE TOWN, Cayman Islands – Anyone who watched the University of Cincinnati Bearcats run up and down the court scoring seemingly at will in their first three games might have been fooled into thinking it would be like that all the time.
UC coach Mick Cronin and his staff knew better.
"This game was going to be unbelievably physical," Cronin said. "I thought it got out of control early and often and became a football game. Fortunately I've got one guy who's tough enough to win the game and we rode him to victory. In a game like that you've got to win the game at the foul line and you've got to win the game with toughness. You've got to get out of Dodge and hopefully nobody gets hurt. We knew it was coming."
That's pretty much how it played out in No. 12 UC's 73-67 victory over Buffalo on Monday in the first round of the Cayman Islands Classic before a crowd estimated at 1,200 at John Gray Gymnasium.
The Bearcats will play Richmond (1-2) at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday in the second round. The Spiders (1-2) knocked off UAB, 63-50, in the first round.
The tough guy that Cronin was referring to was senior forward Gary Clark, who scored 10 points in the last 4:38 to will the Bearcats to victory after they let a 15-point lead shrink to four with 56 seconds to play.
"You've just got to be strong around the rim, finish, get fouled and knock down free throws," Clark said. "That's all it came down to."
Clark finished with 24 points and 14 rebounds for his 20th career double-double to lead UC (4-0). He made 6-of-13 shots from the field and 11-of-13 from the free throw line. Jarron Cumberland scored 14 points and pulled down six rebounds, but committed seven turnovers. Kyle Washington scored 13 points with four rebounds. CJ Massinburg scored 29 for Buffalo (2-1).
The Bearcats shot a season-low 39.6 percent, but made 27 of 35 from the line. Buffalo, the pre-season pick to win the Mid-American Conference East, shot 35.4 percent and was 11-of-17 from the line.
"I told our guys they may be the toughest program in the country," said Buffalo coach Nate Oats. "They build everything on toughness and somehow we fouled them 10 more times than they fouled us."
Oats' defensive plan was to run the UC perimeter players off the 3-point line, clog the middle, and force the Bearcats to score on mid-range jump shots. It might have worked if Clark hadn't risen up to foil the strategy.
After the game, Oats took himself to task for his technical foul with 1:52 left. The technical led to two more Clark free throws that gave UC a 67-57 lead. But it loomed a lot larger when the Bulls got within four points after a 3-pointer by Massinburg.
"If I hadn't got that 'T'," Oats said, "we would have had it to a two-point game. If I had been a little smarter it should have been a one-possession game in the last minute."
UC led by 15 with 3:53 left in the first half, but every time it appeared that the Bearcats had put the game away, Buffalo would come back. It wasn't until Cumberland's breakaway dunk with 10 seconds left that UC clinched the win.
"They were resilient," Washington said of the Bulls. "Coach kept on saying that they weren't going to give up, a team chosen to win their league. We just had to say, 'Let's go.' We took a couple punches to the face, but we bounced back. We made sure we got the 'W' and that's all that really matters."
The Bearcats prevailed despite committing 18 turnovers.
"That's unacceptable for a team that's got guys that are supposed to be pretty good at their positions," Clark said. "It's just not OK for us to turn the ball over like that."
It was just one part of a game that was sloppily played on both sides, which is exactly what Cronin had anticipated.
"They weren't going to let us come in, be pretty and run up and down," Cronin said. "It just wasn't going to happen. Their whole team would have fouled out before they would have allowed that to happen. I say that with tremendous respect for Coach Oats."
Despite his team's close loss, Oats said he was impressed with the Bearcats.
"They've got people picking them for the Final Four," he said. "I think they're close. I wouldn't bet against them because they play so hard."
DIARRA OUT: The Bearcats played without freshman forward Mamoudou Diarra, who didn't make the trip here for precautionary reasons after issues arose regarding his travel visa. UC officials said Diarra is in good standing at UC. Diarra is from Bamako, Mali.
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.