Bearcats-Tigers: Your Reasons To Watch

Mick Cronin and his young, wide-eyed Cincinnati Bearcats (10-2, 1-0 road) will travel to Memphis, Tennessee, to battle John Calipari and his 24th-ranked Tigers on Monday, Dec. 29 (9:00 EST, ESPN2) with nothing to lose. UC has already doubled last year’s non-conference win total and not many people think the Bearcats have a chance in this game.

Memphis (7-3, 6-1 home) lost a ton of firepower from last year’s 38-1 national runner-up squad, including point guard Derrick Rose (first pick in NBA Draft) and seniors Chris Douglas-Roberts (first-round pick) and Joey Dorsey (second-round pick). 

So basically, Calipari lost his best playmaker, his best wing scorer, and his best big man—that’s quite a task when you’re talking about replacing all that talent. 

It’s been a rocky start for the Tigers, who have already lost three times (Xavier, at Georgetown, Syracuse). 

Calipari did manage to reel in three highly touted freshman guards—but there are two problems:

1) None of the three is a point guard.

2) One of them is Tyreke Evans.

Tyreke Evans, from what I’ve seen so far, is more selfish with the basketball than Roseanne Barr is with the entire spread at Thanksgiving (you knew it was coming). He forces more shots than a slutty college chick with below average curves trying to get her groove on at the club. 

Evans, a McDonald's High School All-American, leads the team in scoring at 15.4 ppg, but is shooting just 19% from long range and averages a team-high 3.8 turnovers/game.  “Like MC Breed, I gotta get mines,” Evans said. “I know I have a chance to be a lottery pick so I’m all about the numbers baby.”

Meanwhile, Mick Cronin faces a similar situation with his Bearcats, in that he doesn’t have the luxury of a true point guard either. Before the season, speedy, sweet-shooting Cashmere Wright tore his ACL (injuries of this magnitude have happened too many times to count with this program).

Cronin expected Wright, an explosive scoring point guard from Savannah, GA, to run the show. He’ll of course be out for the season.

Cronin has assigned most of the ball-handling duties to junior Deonta Vaughn (15.1 ppg, 4.8 apg, Preseason First team All Big East). Deonta has never played point guard before; and none of the other four guards on the active roster are point guards, so at times, the turnovers can add up like the number of dependents on Sarah Palin's daughter's tax return. 

ESPN2 has scheduled the game to follow the first major Big East/Big Monday contest of the season: (9) Georgetown at (2) Connecticut.  Cincinnati has not been nationally relevant since 2004. Memphis lost all its stars from last year’s Final Four unit.  Will anybody who doesn’t live in Cincinnati or Memphis be overly concerned with this game? 

Probably not. So for those of you who need a reason to tune in, here’s one: Cincinnati’s 6'9", 270-pound freshman, Yancy Gates, thickly pictured above. 

Big men are a dying breed in college basketball. Gates is just 18 years old, so at times he can look lost. But at other times, he can throw down gigantic two-handed rim-pain or swat shots into the upper deck. He is an absolute man-child when he wants to be.

Oh, and also, this is a rivalry game that dates all the way back to the Metro Conference of the 1980s. In the 1991-92 season, Cincinnati beat Memphis FOUR times, concluding with a 31-point clowning of the Tigers in the Elite 8 on its way to the Final Four in Minneapolis.

Two years ago, Memphis smoked the Bearcats by 33. Plenty of storylines. Check it out next Monday on ESPN2 at 6:00 PST.