Cincinnati Falls Short to Iowa in NCAA Tournament, 79-72

By Bill Koch
GoBearcats.com

COLUMBUS, Ohio — During the 13 years that Mick Cronin has been the head coach at the University of Cincinnati defense has been the foundation of the program.

The Bearcats are annually among the top defensive teams in the country and take great pride in being able to stop their opponents no matter how talented they are.

But UC met its match Friday in Iowa, a Big Ten team that blistered the Bearcats from three-point range on the way to a 79-72 victory in the first round of the NCAA Tournament's South Regional at Nationwide Arena.

"We're not going to win when we give up 79 points," Cronin said.  "I can't remember the last time Cincinnati has won a game where we've given up 79 points."

No. 7 seed UC finishes 28-7. No. 10 seed Iowa (23-11) advances to the second round to face Tennessee on Sunday. 
    
Point guard Justin Jenifer led UC with a career-high 19 points. Jarron Cumberland scored 18 but was held in check for most of the game. Six of his points came in the final minute. Luke Garza scored 20 to lead Iowa. 

UC led by 13 points eight minutes into the game after Iowa missed eight of its first 10 shots, with a large contingent of UC fans roaring their approval. 

During the media timeout with 12 minutes left, Iowa coach Fran McCaffery said he simply tried to keep his players calm and make adjustments.

"You've got to have more ball movement, more people movement, more movement with a purpose to get better shots," McCaffery said. "And then we just needed to see it go in a little bit there. We just sort of settled down. Then you felt like, OK, we can attack this thing successfully."

Once the Hawkeyes found their range there was no stopping them. Iowa shot 54.7 percent for the game, a sizzling 65.4 percent in the second half, including seven of 11 from three-point range. The Hawkeyes made 11 of 22 from long range from the game compared with six of 27 for UC.
    
"It's all on us," Jenifer said. "Our intensity dropped. We didn't have the same bounce that we had in the first eight minutes and they started hitting open shots. 
What we did the first eight minutes was play Bearcat defense."

The Bearcats were also hurt by Nysier Brooks' foul trouble. Brooks, who scored 11 points and pulled down five rebounds in 20 minutes, went to the bench with his fourth foul with 8:33 left and UC leading 57-53. When he returned at the 4:20 mark it took him only 11 seconds to pick up his fifth foul.

"His absence affected us a lot," said junior forward Trevon Scott. "But we've had plenty of games where we had to go with a different lineup like that and came out successful. We didn't get it done today like we usually do. If Naz would have fought through, played smarter, stayed in, I don't know, the outcome of the game would have different. But he played hard. He was trying. We just came up short."

Cronin pointed out that UC outscored Iowa by 12 points with Brooks on the floor.
    
"Too much help had to be given when he was out," he said.

Even with Brooks playing only half the game and with Cumberland, the American Athletic Conference's Player of the Year, struggling to score for most of the game, the Bearcats trailed by only one with 2:57 left only to see Iowa reel off eight straight points to take a 73-64 lead with 1:07 remaining. 

The Bearcats cut the deficit to five on a Cumberland three-pointer with 19 seconds left, but they wouldn't score again.     
    
According to Cronin, UC made the mistake of trying to win with outside shooting when its defense faltered instead of remaining true to its nature by working to get quality shots near the basket.

As Brooks, put it, "we stopped getting layups and we started trying to shoot with them. And they're a shooting team."

"We couldn't stop them," Cronin said.
    
Only Houston, which scored 85 points against the Bearcats in the final game of the regular season, scored more points against them this season.
    
The players in the UC locker room were very emotional after the game, with some fighting back tears. That's not unusual when a team loses in the NCAA Tournament, but the loss appeared to be a little more painful for this group.

The emotion might have started when Cronin hugged seniors Jenifer and Cane Broome as they came off the court after the game. 

"I love those guys," Cronin said. "I put a lot on our seniors in our program. I told them right away we're not going to have a great year if you guys don't give me everything you've got. You've to care about us winning, care about making sure that this program that this program doesn't take a step back.

"They couldn't have given me any more than they did. There's nothing more that those two guys could have done as far as effort, trying to get better and caring about their teammates."

Cronin said all of his players gave him everything they had.

"I don't think they could have accomplished much more than they did this year," he said. "It was a very tough draw to play against a team that was in the Top 25 way longer than we were this year, when we won the conference (tournament) championship. But that's the way the cookie crumbles." 
    
Perhaps no one was more emotional than Broome, who transferred to UC after he scored 1,136 points in two years at Sacred Heart.

"The last three years have been the best years of my life with these guys," Broome said. "Now I don't know what to do. I'm going to start over and I'm going to keep playing, but not with these guys."

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.