Sunday, January 23, 2000
No. 1 Bearcats still looking to improve
BY MIKE DeCOURCY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
MILWAUKEE — The Final Four seems less a goal than a requirement. Every conference game is a rout, whether they play their best or somewhat less. To find a competitive game, it sometimes seems they would need to move — not to another league, but the next level.
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UC at MARQUETTE
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• When: 9:30 p.m. today
• Where: Bradley Center
• Records: UC 17-1, 5-0 in Conference USA; Marquette 11-5, 4-1
• TV: ESPN2
• Radio: WLW-AM (700)
BY THE NUMBERS
• 1/3: Amount of a practice missed by UC forward Pete Mickeal because of the flu.
• 38.8: Combined scoring average by Mickeal and Kenyon Martin since the first Marquette game.
• 43.3: UC's shooting percentage since the first Marquette game.
• 3-2: Marquette's record in past five games against UC.
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This is not a common predicament the Cincinnati Bearcats have encountered, and it's one every team would love to have. Kentucky in 1995-96 and Duke in 1997-98 thrived under similar circumstances.
Each team had the ability to play modestly and win extravagantly. Each was 17-1 through 18 games, the record the Bearcats carry into their Conference USA game at 9:30 tonight against Marquette (11-5, 4-1) at the Bradley center.
What Kentucky and Duke accomplished that UC would love to repeat — in addition to reaching the NCAA championship game — is maintaining the discipline to continue improving even when improvement doesn't appear necessary.
“We realized most of the games we played, we were going to win mainly off talent, but we didn't want to win that way,” said Wayne Turner, a freshman point guard at UK in 1996 and now a member of the IBL's Cincinnati Stuff. “We wanted to win by executing our offense and playing team basketball.
“We came to practice every day trying to beat each other up. What we tried to do on that team was block out all the distractions, people ex
pecting us to win the national championship.”
At this point a year ago, Duke was presented as potentially one of the greatest teams ever in college basketball. They so thoroughly overwhelmed the rest of the Atlantic Coast Conference that only one of their games was decided by a single-digit margin.
But coach Mike Krzyzewski did not allow the Blue Devils to stagnate. Center Elton Brand, who won the Oscar Robertson Trophy as college basketball's player of the year, even was benched at the start of two games.
“It was just for not playing to a certain level,” said Brand, now one of the NBA's top rookies with Chicago Bulls. “(Krzyzewski) got the message to me, definitely. He had some good teams before, and he really knew how to keep us focused and keep us wanting to win.”
The major difference between UC and those two great teams is the Wildcats and Blue Demons were almost entirely composed of veterans.
“They did it with guys that had been around, and I think that makes a world of difference,” Bearcats coach Bob Huggins said. “Your ability to concentrate is so much better.”
The Bearcats have two freshmen, guards DerMarr Johnson and Kenny Satterfield, among their top six players. They still are being introduced to the demands of Division I basketball, and they are learning while trying to preserve a No.1 ranking.
Huggins said he knows what to expect from veterans Kenyon Martin and Pete Mickeal. In the Bearcats' last four games, in which their average margin of victory dropped to 16.5 points from 33 in the previous four games, the two seniors combined for averages of 39 points and 17 rebounds.
However, the coaching staff noticed the Bearcats aren't passing the ball with the same precision as when they were wrecking opponents. In the past four games, 54 percent of UC's baskets were preceded by assists, compared to 62 percent in the first 14 games.
“It's a must that people come out and pay attention to detail, so we can get better,” Martin said. “We can't go through what we went through last year, where people weren't focused and weren't concentrating on what we needed to get done.
“I think everybody — or the majority — has an idea what we need to get done, and I think that's going to carry us through these rough times.”
Aside from being loaded with future pros Antoine Walker, Derek Anderson, Ron Mercer, Tony Delk and Turner, what made UK the national champion in 1996 was the vast improvement in its defense from the start of the season. That resulted from a lot of practices and, eventually, from games in which the Wildcats played against their potential as much as the opposition.
“I think you block out the logo on the other guys' uniform and go out and play them like you would any other game, whether it's a ranked team or a not-ranked team,” Turner said. “You have to focus your mind, play hard and not relax at any stage of the game.”
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