Cronin: ‘We had to toughen up’
01/12/13 at 11:26pm by bkoch

You could see the intensity from the UC players as soon as the game started. Either they were going to stop their slide of three losses in four games or they were going to go down hard. The way it turned out, losing wasn’t an option.

UC never trailed and led by as many as 18 points on the way to a 68-58 victory Saturday over Rutgers by returning to their roots of defense and rooting.


Mick Cronin

Funny, isn’t it? While we were all wringing our hands about UC’s problems on offense, Mick Cronin turned back to defense to put an end to a two-game losing streak.

“We’ve got to remember who we are,” Cronin said.

Who they are – or what they are – is a collection of good but not great players who have to win with effort and defense. It’s hard to do that for 30 games a year, but if they don’t do it they know they’re susceptible to losing.

“We don’t have overwhelming talent,” Cronin said. “We have good players but a lot of people have good players. It’s a lot harder to win post-Christmas. We were one of the toughest teams in the country and the best defensive teams in the country pre-Christmas. It’s a lot harder to do that after Christmas. We just got a little soft and we just weren’t getting the job done defensively. People talked too much about offense.”

Cashmere Wright was the offensive star with 23 points, but the Bearcats got contributions from a myriad of players. Titus Rubles had 11 rebounds. JaQuon Parker scored 11 points with eight rebounds. Sean Kilpatrick did the bulk of the defensive work on Rutgers guard Eli Carter, limiting him to six points on 1-of-11 shooting.

Justin Jackson, who was benched for the entire game against Notre Dame last Monday, had six points and eight rebounds, and Jermaine Sanders scored nine crucial points off the bench.

It was a win the Bearcats had to have and they got it.

“We had to toughen up,” Cronin said. “And if you don’t, you lose the next one. It’s like I told our guys. You’ve got to live day by day.”

http://cincinnati.com/blogs/uc/2013/01/1...oughen-up/