Sunday, January 09, 2000
For UC, it's restful at the top
New No. 1 team enjoys off day
BY MIKE DeCOURCY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
The unofficial news that the Cincinnati Bearcats would become college basketball's No.1 team broke Saturday evening during their victory over Marquette. That's when they learned top-ranked Stanford was about to lose.
When it became official on Sunday, UC was enjoying a rare — and sorely needed — day off.
With a schedule that required them to play four games in the previous 10 days, the Bearcats hadn't been afforded a day of rest since Christmas Eve.
UC returned to No.1 because it won for the sixth time in a row since its loss to Xavier on Dec. 18, whereas Stanford dropped a home game to Arizona and No.2 Connecticut also lost at home, to Notre Dame.
UC got 27 first-place votes. The Bearcats were ranked ahead of Arizona and Stanford. UC spent five weeks at No.1 earlier this season.
“It's no big deal. We've been No.1 before. It's nothing special,” said forward Pete Mickeal. “It just gives other guys more incentive to come out and be ready to play us.”
The Bearcats are 14-1 overall, 3-0 in Conference USA, with six wins at home. They spent 24 days, from Nov. 22 through Dec. 31, away from Cincinnati for road and neutral-site games, and that doesn't count the crosstown trip to XU.
After Wednesday, when they play at Tulane (10-3, 0-2), they will have only six road games remaining before the C-USA tournament in Memphis March 8-11.
“We've played a lot of games in a very short period of time, and we've practiced pretty hard,” coach Bob Huggins said. “We could probably use the day off.”
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