Tickets12/12 HOUSTON (28-2, 15-2) AT 20/19 CINCINNATI (25-5, 14-3)
Sunday, March 10 • Noon (ET) • Fifth Third Arena • Cincinnati, Ohio
SERIES INFO: 36th meeting; Cincinnati leads 31-4 overall; Cincinnati leads 16-0 at home;
Cincinnati leads 14-4 in Houston; Cincinnati leads 1-0 at neutral sites
STREAK: Houston - 1
LAST MEETING: No. 12 Houston beat No. 25 Cincinnati, 65-58, on Feb. 10, 2019 at the Fertitta Center in Houston
COACHES: Mick Cronin is in his 13th season at Cincinnati (293-145); 16th season overall (362-169)
Kelvin Sampson is in his fifth season at Houston (111-50); 30th season overall (611-320)
AP/USA TODAY RANKINGS (MARCH 4): Cincinnati (20/19); Houston (12/12)
RADIO: 700 WLW; Dan Hoard provides play-by-play with color analyst Terry Nelson
TV: CBS; Andrew Catalon provides play-by-play with color analyst Steve Lappas
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By Bill Koch
GoBearcats.com
CINCINNATI – Justin Jenifer can pinpoint the exact moment when his University of Cincinnati basketball career started to change for the better.
"My junior year we played UConn and I had a terrible game," Jenifer said. "I went back into my hotel room and I called my dad. I cried on the phone and felt like I was letting everybody down back home. I felt as though I was being a big disappointment and I was tired of it. I had to get back to the drawing board, get back to working hard."
Jenifer, a 5-foot-10 senior point guard from Baltimore, used that day as a springboard to become a starter who leads the American Athletic Conference in three-point shooting percentage (43.9 percent) and would rank third nationally in assist-to-turnover ratio (3.8-to-1) except that his 2.9 assists per game ranks just below the 3.0 required to qualify.
Cane Broome, a six-foot senior guard from East Hartford, Conn., also overcame obstacles to become the Bearcats' first player off the bench and a valued contributor to the 20th-ranked team in the country.
Both players will be honored in a pre-game Senior Day ceremony Sunday at Fifth Third Arena before the noon tipoff of the game between UC and No. 12 Houston that will decide whether Houston (28-2 overall, 15-2 in the AAC) will win the AAC title outright or have to share it with the Bearcats (25-5, 14-3).
UC forfeited a chance to claim the title for its own when it lost at Central Florida on Thursday, but can still claim a share with a win over the Cougars. That would give the Bearcats back-to-back league championships for the first time since the 2001 and 2002 when UC won Conference USA titles.
"It would be awesome," said UC coach Mick Cronin. "Sometimes winning can get minimized, especially when you've done a lot of it. But I can assure you everybody else in our league wishes they were playing for a championship Sunday."
The adversity that Broome faced surfaced after he transferred to UC from Sacred Heart in 2016 having already scored 1,000 career points. He had posted a 23.1-point average as a sophomore and was voted the Player of the Year in the Northeast Conference while earning honorable mention All-American honors from the Associated Press.
But Broome has started only six games in two years at UC, where he has averaged 8.0 points.
"I knew coming into a bigger school that (my scoring) was going to decrease," Broome said, "just from stepping up a level and being around better talent. I wanted that, to be honest. My first two years at Sacred Heart were great. I got to reach individual goals that everybody wants to accomplish in college – 1,000 points and Player of the Year in the conference.
"But when you're growing up, you don't really watch Sacred Heart on TV. You grow up watching the type of team that we play at Cincinnati, like UConn. I wanted to fill a dream of mine and come to a school like that, come to a school that was going to push me. Of course I wanted to start and score 20 a game, but that wasn't realistic when I got here."
As a junior, Broome has been a part of AAC regular-season and tournament titles at UC and has a chance to repeat those feats as a senior. He's proud of his role made to both teams.
"You just to find a way to contribute," Broome said. " I feel like my three years (he sat out in 2016-17 under NCAA transfer rules) have helped me become more of a man just going through certain obstacles and having to find myself again after being so big at one school and then coming to another school."
The duo has been part of 86 victories during the last three years at UC, the most for any three-year period in school history and the third-most in the country during that time behind Gonzaga (98) and Villanova (90). Jenifer has played in 104 victories at UC, third-most in school history behind Steve Logan (111) and Gary Clark (106).
"Justin is a guy that is how it should be in college basketball," Cronin said. "You get to college and it's a lot harder than you thought. In our program we have a saying: you ether make an excuse and transfer or you figure out how to be a good player, fight through it, toughen up and realize you're not in high school anymore.
Justin is the poster child for that. He did two things on offense. He figured out how to take care of the ball and he turned himself into a high percentage shooter."
Cronin praised Broome for making "monster baskets" for UC late in games, for maintaining his confidence during difficult times, and for the influence he has had on his teammates.
"All he has done is care about winning," Cronin said.
Both players will have a chance Sunday to finish their home careers with a flourish by beating Houston to claim a share of the AAC title.
"I feel like this is us leaving our legacy," Jenifer said.
UC fell to the Cougars at Houston 65-58 on Feb. 10, shooting only 33.3 percent from the field. The Bearcats shot only 37.1 percent against UCF on Thursday night and haven't hit the 40 percent mark since they shot 41 percent in a win at UConn on Feb. 24.
Some of their offensive problems have stemmed from the recent struggles of junior guard Jarron Cumberland, who has averaged 13.4 points over his last five games, down significantly from his season average of 18.3.
"We've got to become a better offensive team," Cronin said. "We're taking too many challenged shots. We've got to pass the ball better. (Opponents) are being more physical (with Cumberland) and I'm very unhappy with what's going on, but that does not absolve us from our lack of passing and our lack of working harder to get each other open. We've also got to finish better around the rim."
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.