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Rob Oller commentary: Buckeyes, ’Cats rarely play, but rivalry bitter
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ctipton Offline
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Rob Oller commentary: Buckeyes, ’Cats rarely play, but rivalry bitter
Rob Oller commentary: Buckeyes, ’Cats rarely play, but rivalry bitter

Wednesday March 21, 2012 7:41 AM

Quietly, lest they worry their jitters might spread to the youth, older Ohio State basketball fans express anxiety over what they know about Cincinnati. And over what remains unknown.

They know that 50 years ago this week, Cincinnati won the second of back-to-back NCAA national titles by defeating the Buckeyes in the 1962 championship game. This after stunning OSU in the 1961 final.

Those scars would have faded by now, but we generally fear what we don’t know, and Buckeyes fans don’t know enough about the Bearcats’ general DNA to salve wounds and relieve insecurities that go way back.

Had Ohio State and Cincinnati met regularly through the years, the larger sample size would have created concrete distance between 1962 and today. Instead, the teams have played just once during the regular season — in 2006 when OSU won 72-50 in the Wooden Tradition in Indianapolis — and never again in the NCAA Tournament.

That changes on Thursday, when No. 2 seed Ohio State plays No. 6 Cincinnati in the Sweet 16 in Boston. It will be a nervy 40 minutes for Buckeye Nation, especially among those who recall the 1961 and 1962 losses.

[Image: oller-3-21-art0-gvqghlrm-1osu-uc15-jpg.j...,h:459,t:2]
Dispatch file photo
Jerry Lucas, left, John Havlicek (5) and Ohio State lost to Cincinnati in the 1962 NCAA championship game.

There is more to the friction between the programs than two games played a half-century ago. Among the suspicion and mistrust, it long has been rumored that then-UC coach Bob Huggins was the source who reported potential Ohio State violations to the NCAA that resulted in Buckeyes recruit Damon Flint ending up at Cincinnati in 1993. It is further hinted that current Bearcats coach Mick Cronin was the Woodward High School assistant coach who accompanied Flint on his visit to Columbus, where the free meal occurred. After Flint landed at UC, Huggins brought in Cronin as video coordinator.

Other slights and verbal slams — some real, some perceived — followed through the years. Some of the back-and-forth has contributed to Ohio State choosing not to schedule Cincinnati, but also there is the sense that OSU is loathe to risk what it views as its alpha-dog status in the state; that playing Cincinnati is not a win-win for the Buckeyes.

Regardless of what has built upon the rift between the two basketball programs, the initial bad taste began during the Kennedy administration.

“There is as much pressure on (Ohio State) to win this game as there was on us back then,” said Gary Gearhart, who was a senior on the 1961-62 OSU team. “Just the fact that we’re playing Cincinnati and the fact they did to us what they did. It’s been 50 years and friends still get on me about it. They say, ‘I was a little kid staying up late listening to you guys, and you got beat. And it killed us.’ ”

Cincinnati fans find the OSU angst just so delicious.

Tony Yates chuckled the knowing chuckle of someone who sits on the winning side of history. Yates, who was a junior guard on the Bearcats’ ’62 title team, will always be able to say he never lost to the Buckeyes, who were ranked ahead of UC entering the ’62 game.

“There wasn’t any chip on our shoulder,” said Yates, who also coached Cincinnati from 1983 to ’89. “It was more just the obvious thing that when the other team was rated No. 1 in front of you ... it inspired you to play harder.”

Yates sees no reason Ohio State fans should be overly nervous about playing UC in March.

“The young kids don’t know anything about (1961 and ’62). You can’t expect them to,” Yates said. “It’s just something for the old-timers to hash back and forth.”

Perhaps. But there is more to the hashing than boasting and bragging. There is a tinge or two of resentment that rises from the hilly river town. Yates wonders why Ohio State has avoided Cincinnati for decades.

“On numerous occasions since the ’60s, Ohio State was approached (to play UC) and turned it down,” Yates said. “It probably goes above the head coach. I think it goes up into the administration.”

Yates believes some highbrow Buckeyes are scared to put their school’s premier status to the test because they’re not sure what would happen.

That worry works itself down into much of the older fan base, too. It is left to the younger generations to declare, “Buckeyes vs. Bearcats? Bring it on.”

On Thursday, finally, it gets brought. Buckle up. It should be a good one.

roller@dispatch.com

Rob Oller is a sports reporter for The Dispatch.
Ohio State vs. Cincinnati

OSU leads series 5-4

http://www.buckeyextra.com/content/stori...itter.html
 
(This post was last modified: 03-21-2012 01:58 PM by ctipton.)
03-21-2012 01:57 PM
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ctipton Offline
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RE: Rob Oller commentary: Buckeyes, ’Cats rarely play, but rivalry bitter
OSU-UC cold war not likely to thaw
Only NCAA matchup brings them together now


By Bob Baptist

The Columbus Dispatch Wednesday March 21, 2012 7:44 AM

It didn’t take nearly 45 years to get Ohio State and Cincinnati to share a basketball court again.

When Ohio’s two largest college basketball programs face off in Boston on Thursday night in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament, it will have been only five years and three months since network television paired them against one another in the Wooden Tradition in Indianapolis.

Without the NCAA bracketing them against each other in a future tournament, though, it could be another 45 years before they play in the regular season again.

“It’s probably highly unlikely,” Ohio State coach Thad Matta said yesterday when asked if the odds were better now than they have been.

The teams’ East Regional semifinal on Thursday will mark 50 years since the teams met for the 1962 NCAA championship and Cincinnati won for the second year in a row. Ohio State had won the national title in 1960.

Since then, their only meeting has been a 72-50 Ohio State victory in Indianapolis in December 2006. It was the first regular-season game between the schools since 1921, and evidently the last for a while.

Matta and two other athletic department officials said yesterday that neither program has contacted the other since then about playing. Ohio State had seemed receptive in the past to playing host to a game in Columbus but not playing in Cincinnati. The Bearcats have insisted on a home-and-home arrangement.

Asked if it was possible the two sides could meet somewhere in the middle on the issue, Matta smiled and said, “Jeffersonville? At the outlet mall?”

After the game five years ago, Cincinnati coach Mick Cronin was outspoken in his belief that the only reason Ohio State agreed then to the matchup was because the Buckeyes were national championship contenders with freshmen Greg Oden and Mike Conley Jr. and the Bearcats were rebuilding after the controversial dismissal of longtime coach Bob Huggins. Cronin was in his first season as coach.

“They caught us when we were down,” Cronin said afterward. “The game was contracted . . . after coach Huggins got fired. It was obvious we were going to be in a depleted state.”

Matta’s response: “Nobody was feeling sorry for me when I got to Ohio State, were they?”

The cold war between the programs dates back decades, beyond even the NCAA probation Ohio State received for violating rules in recruiting guard Damon Flint of Cincinnati in the early 1990s. The Buckeyes long suspected that UC, or someone looking to curry favor with the program, turned them in, and Flint ended up playing for the Bearcats.

But no one has pinpointed the root of the intransigence, other than Ohio State looking down its nose at what it considers an inferior institution.

Cronin has refused to revisit the issue since the Bearcats defeated Florida State in the round of 32 on Sunday.

“It is for everybody else but me,” he said yesterday. “It’s not for our locker room. I don’t have time to worry about that stuff. My guys don’t know anything about that stuff. We could be playing Xavier and it wouldn’t matter. We’re trying to win the national championship.”

Matta feels the same way. He said not only does he doubt his players know what happened between the programs 50 years ago, “I don’t even know. I was born six years afterward.

“This isn’t about Ohio State-UC. This is about trying to get to the Elite Eight and having a chance to play for the national championship,” Matta said. “It’s more about advancing than who you’re advancing against.”

http://www.buckeyextra.com/content/stori...-thaw.html
 
03-21-2012 02:04 PM
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ctipton Offline
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RE: Rob Oller commentary: Buckeyes, ’Cats rarely play, but rivalry bitter
The following is a comment in the Cleveland Plain Dealer re: OSU;

Quote:The fact that three other Ohio schools made it to the Sweet 16 kind of refutes the arrogant OSU attitude that they are the only major college sports team in Ohio. Wrong again, Suckeyes. They are the NY Yankees of college sports who buy themselves to winning records. Why so many people in Cleveland root for that worthless school in Columbus never ceases to be amazing. There are many worthwhile college sports programs in Ohio. The arrogance of THE OSU Yankees shows total disrespect to those many fine schools.

And no, I'm not from Michigan. Just a Cleveland sports fan who is sick of being told that rooting for OSU is comparable to rooting for the Browns, the Indians, and Cavs. It's not and never has been. I don't root for out of town teams like the Steelers and Yankees because I'm not a front runner and I'm loyal to my LOCAL teams. OSU is not now nor have they ever been a a local Cleveland sports team. I root against Columbus's big time college sports team every chance I get. Their unjustified arrogance is disgusting.

http://www.cleveland.com/ohio-sports-blo...links.html
 
03-21-2012 02:13 PM
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bearcatmill Offline
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RE: Rob Oller commentary: Buckeyes, ’Cats rarely play, but rivalry bitter
(03-21-2012 02:13 PM)ctipton Wrote:  The following is a comment in the Cleveland Plain Dealer re: OSU;

Quote:The fact that three other Ohio schools made it to the Sweet 16 kind of refutes the arrogant OSU attitude that they are the only major college sports team in Ohio. Wrong again, Suckeyes. They are the NY Yankees of college sports who buy themselves to winning records. Why so many people in Cleveland root for that worthless school in Columbus never ceases to be amazing. There are many worthwhile college sports programs in Ohio. The arrogance of THE OSU Yankees shows total disrespect to those many fine schools.

And no, I'm not from Michigan. Just a Cleveland sports fan who is sick of being told that rooting for OSU is comparable to rooting for the Browns, the Indians, and Cavs. It's not and never has been. I don't root for out of town teams like the Steelers and Yankees because I'm not a front runner and I'm loyal to my LOCAL teams. OSU is not now nor have they ever been a a local Cleveland sports team. I root against Columbus's big time college sports team every chance I get. Their unjustified arrogance is disgusting.

http://www.cleveland.com/ohio-sports-blo...links.html

Wow! Didn't think I would see this view coming from Cleveland. Most root for An Ohio University, especially since their pro sports are not doing well and An Ohio University is more successful.
 
03-21-2012 03:58 PM
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