UConn vs. Cincinnati: Big East battle
The Connecticut Huskies celebrate their 81-52 victory over the Bucknell Bison during the second round of the 2011 NCAA men's basketball tournament at the Verizon Center. (March 17, 2011) Credit: Getty Images
WASHINGTON -- With the army of Big East missionaries fanning out across the NCAA Tournament, preaching their gospel of being the one true conference, there increasingly is the chance they might begin to infringe on one another's territory.
Saturday night, UConn will cross paths with Cincinnati, and only one will ascend to next weekend's Sweet 16.
Cincinnati coach Mick Cronin declared that the last thing he wanted this early on was to deal with a fellow Big Easterner after regular-season conference play left Cincy in seventh place at 11-7. (And UConn ninth at 9-9.)
"I kind of agree," UConn center Alex Oriakhi said. "We saw everybody early in the season and know how crazy the Big East is. I kind of want to play somebody new."
UConn coach Jim Calhoun said that "personally," he preferred the old days of a nine-team conference, which he said had more "romance" than this expanding super-league apparently intent on taking over the basketball world. "My preference," Calhoun said, "probably would be that I want every Big East team to win, but I don't want to face any. And it's impossible, obviously."
So as Oriakhi concluded, "It is what it is." And the two will reprise their Feb. 27 regular-season game, won by UConn at Cincinnati, 67-59.
Might that result provide insight into Saturday night's outcome? Or could it be that UConn (27-9) that day "didn't get a full flavor," in Calhoun's words, of Cincinnati (26-8)?
"They're the type of team that's bothered us during the seasons, their physicality," he said. "But we were able to kind of keep it on the outside, use fast breaks and make shots from distance."
Calhoun's worry is that a poor shooting night will deliver UConn into Cincinnati's rugged world of inside force, where 6-9, 265-pound Yancy Gates rules and which Cincinnati so effectively used to blunt Missouri's transition game. If you can't run against Cincinnati, there's every possibility you can't hide.
Cronin countered that UConn has "arguably the best player in the country" in Kemba Walker and "I don't think I'd get much of an argument that UConn is the hottest team in America right now." Not to mention "a conference foe."
"They say a bullet tells the truth. Well, the Big East Conference," Cronin said, reinforcing the party line, "tells the truth. You lose a conference game and people say, 'What's wrong?' Nothing. You just played a Big East team."
Saturday night, only one of these teams will experience a hallelujah moment.
