T
here was no telling which way the University of Cincinnati basketball program would lean after Mick Cronin announced a leave of absence from the team he has coached for the past nine years to deal with an unruptured brain aneurysm.
Would the Bearcats continue to lean forward as they looked to continue their early-season winning ways and perform well in the American Athletic Conference schedule en route to a possible high seed in the NCAA tournament?
Or would the University of Cincinnati lean on the brake, bringing the team’s momentum to a screeching halt and threatening to undo some of the progress Cronin made since taking over a program that was on life support in 2006?
The immediate answer wasn’t a positive one — VCU destroyed UC 68-47 in the first game of Cronin’s absence. Afterward, interim head coach Larry Davis, with a loosened tie and a deep breath before the postgame press conference, spoke with the assembled media about the team’s feelings and its future without Cronin.
“This is a hard press conference for me, because the guy has been my best friend for a long time,” Davis said. “To sit here and tell you it’s not a big deal, well, it is a big deal. … Everyone is a little uncertain of things.”
Davis admitted in that press conference that the Bearcats hadn’t given their best effort that night, but he also seemed confident that the program would endure, with or without its coach.
Davis was proven right last Sunday when the Bearcats earned a No. 8 seed into the NCAA tournament where they’ll face No. 9 Purdue in Louisville on Thursday. If they win, they’ll almost certaily have to battle undefeated Kentucky in order make the Sweet 16. But considering what the team has endured this year — its coach unable to work on the sideline — the fact UC went 22-10 overall and 13-5 in the conference is an impressive feat.
“It means a lot about us, our team, our organization and our coaches that we can stay together and not let adversity affect the way we play and want to perform,” said sophomore guard Troy Caupain. “Not having coach Cronin is a big thing, but the message is the same. It just shows how close we are as a team, that nothing can really stop us. We’re all here for one thing, putting Cincinnati on the map.”
The Bearcats performance at the end of the regular season might have managed that.
After falling to Xavier in mid-February to extend a losing streak to three games, the Bearcats — who were sitting at 17-9 overall and 8-5 in the conference — were in danger of slipping closer to the edge of the tournament bubble if they didn’t turn their season around with five regular season games remaining.
“You start to get into some bad losses and you wonder if you’re still going to make it,” CBSSports.com’s NCAA tournament forecaster Jerry Palm told The Cincinnati Enquirer after the Xavier loss. “They need to win at Houston, UCF, games like that. Those are teams that can hurt them if they don’t.”
The Bearcats took heed, winning at Houston, blasting Central Florida by 23 points, triumphing in back-to-back road games at Tulane and Tulsa, and knocking off Memphis in the regular-season finale. That stretch of play sealed UC’s entry into the NCAA tournament and gave the Bearcats some much-needed enthusiasm.
“We had to win the last five games,” Davis sad. “Three of them because they would have been bad losses. Beating Tulsa at Tulsa and beating Memphis at home, those are games you had to win. We’ve prepared for [the NCAA tournament] in a way. We look back at it and say we were preparing for this the whole time.”
They’ll have to hope it primes the Bearcats well enough to face the Boilermakers, who went 21-12 on the season and 12-6 in the Big Ten. Though Purdue boasts only two players who average double-digit points per game, its defense — especially on the interior — is suffocating.
But Cronin knows all about Purdue. He’s watched the Boilermakers plenty this year because of his inability to coach the Bearcats, and he’ll be key in formulating a gameplan for UC. Either way, though, he knows his program has passed a major test this season without him.
“When I announced I wasn’t going to coach the rest of the year, I was more concerned with the players’ development than me not coaching,” Cronin said. “I didn’t think it was going to be a problem. I know I have a great coaching staff, and I know what goes on in our program. Obviously, some things have had to happen that were different. But the program was the most important thing. We like to think it’s bigger than any one person — be it a player or a coach.”
The UC BEARCATS play Purdue in the NCAA Tournament’s second round 7:10 p.m. Thursday.
This article appears in Mar 18-24, 2015.