Wednesday night was awesome. The Cincinnati Bearcats reopened a pristine, beautiful arena that will be a major home field advantage, moving forward, and we witnessed the beginning of an intriguing career in Logan Johnson.
Sure, the Bearcats lost the game, but I’m not super worried about that. This was an emotional game. The re-opening of home. The start of the post-Gary Clark, post-Jacob Evans, post-Kyle Washington era. The first time Ohio State has played in Cincinnati since before the Great Depression (1920). All of those are narratives, sure, and it’s up to the players to tune that out, but c’mon. You’d have to be braindead to ignore all that. So, yeah, this was always going to be a tumultuous matchup.
I get it, they shot poorly. Scored just 22 points in the first 25 minutes of the game, had sub-20% shooting percentage, all that. That is the sort of thing that isn’t going to linger. Now, are they going to shoot 60% in a game? Probably not. But they wont consistently shoot as bad as they did in the opener.
Part of the problem in the first half was Jaron Cumberland, one of the expected leaders of this team, did not score. Can Broom made like one shot. Tre Scott had zero dunks. If you would have told me that before the game, I’d have said they’d lose by 30. But they didn’t. The defense is just as Mick as it’s always been under Cronin. They kept the lane clean, for the most part, and were beaten by some good shots from the Buckeyes. There were no easy points given up, though.
Oh, and yeah it took me a bit to get to a point in the opening graph, but welcome to Cincinnati, Logan Johnson. This kid is going to be fun to watch. Yeah, I know you just looked up his stat line and went cross-eyed, because there wasn’t much to talk about. So why am I happy? His intensity. Kid was manning up with whoever was wearing red. He disrupted passes, he got the crowd into the game when the Bearcats trailed by 14. It was his first game. Sign me up for a number zero jersey.
But the biggest point of the night was Fifth-Third. The place is absolutely fantastic. I got to check it out before last Saturday’s football game, and it is completely and utterly different from the way it was just two years ago. You would not know you were in the same building. As the team grows, this place will be rocking and will be as good, or better, that SMU or Houston for toughest place in The American to play.
Bearcats basketball is back, baby.
Other goings on:
Dayton and Wright State both won their openers. Dayton played a close game with North Florida, and won 78-70. Wright State, on the other hand, dispatched Western Carolina 96-73. The Raiders have a legitimate argument for being the best team in Southwest Ohio.
Thursday night is a quiet one, for area college basketball. Friday sees Kentucky, Northern Kentucky, and Missouri State back in action.
Sportsinnati 