Slowly but surely our UC men’s basketball Bearcats are showing strong signs of improvement compared to recent years. In 2005 legendary basketball coach Bob Huggins left the Bearcats due to a variety of on and off the court issues. Huggins coached at Cincinnati for 16 years and led the Bearcats to 14 straight NCAA tournament appearances. So obviously with his departure the team’s future was not looking as strong as in previous years.
Huggins was a mastermind on the recruiting trail, pulling in High School All Americans every year. Kenyon Martin, Danny Fortson, Reuben Patterson, Kenny Satterfield, and Damarr Johnson were just a few of the outstanding prospects Huggins was able to land in the late 90s. In 2006 at Kansas State, Huggins recruited the #1 High School prospect in the nation and future #2 NBA draft selection Mike Beasley, along with homegrown teammate of the infamous O.J. Mayo, Bill Walker, to play for the Wildcats.
The only drag about Huggins’s departure was the thought that in the year 2006 Huggins could have potentially landed Beasley, Mayo, and Walker all in the same signing class to play for the Bearcats. All three of these players are currently NBA players.
Mick Cronin, a long term understudy of Huggins, took the reigns as head coach and has been trying to bring back that winning combination of team work and talent, and the future is indeed finally looking promising again.
Although our Bearcats are not a top 25 team at the moment, I see big changes being made on the hardwood. Deonta Vaughn and Mike Williams are beginning to play up to the expectations when they were coming out of high school as top ranked prospects. Mike Williams was a McDonalds All American coming out of Camden, Alabama.
Deonta Vaughn has really stepped up his role as a floor general, leading the team in with 15.7 points and 4.6 assists per game. The Bearcats, as we all know, play in the best conference in college basketball, the Big East, and they have pulled together a decent resume of quality wins this season, defeating Georgetown two times, and St John’s and Notre Dame once each. Saturday’s 85-69 loss to the #4 ranked Pittsburgh Panthers had enough positive signs to leave the Bearcats on the hunt for a big upset that could potentially boost them into the NCAA tournament.
Their schedule throughout the remainder of the season is a very tough one, with Louisville, Syracuse, and Bob Huggins’s West Virginia Mountaineers. My prediction is that the Bearcats need two big wins to close out the season to have a chance to make the big dance.