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Huggins Springs Stifling Zone on Golden Eagles
By JOE KAY
AP Sports Writer
 CINCINNATI
(AP) � As he squinted at tape through bleary
eyes late at night, Cincinnati coach Bob Huggins
decided that it was time to do something totally
out of character.
He devised a game plan with the No. 5 Bearcats
playing zone defense.
With Steve Logan struggling and their front line
wilting, the Bearcats slipped into a zone that
confounded No. 13 Marquette and set up a 77-63
victory Saturday for the Conference USA
tournament title.
Cincinnati (30-3) set a school record for
victories and made its bid for its first No. 1
seeding in the NCAA tournament by ditching the
bumping, man-to-man defense that's its
trademark.
``It shocked me,'' said Logan, who overcame a
sluggish first half and finished with 26 points.
``We never play zone here.''
Trailing by five points in the first half,
Cincinnati came out in a 2-3 zone that confused
Marquette (26-6) and knocked its offense out of
sync for the rest of the game.
Huggins watched tape of Marquette's high-energy
offense after the semifinals on Friday night and
concluded the Bearcats would wear down if they
played man-to-man for the entire game.
``I didn't think on 12 hours' rest that we could
chase them around,'' Huggins said. ``As long as
I've coached, I've never played a 2-3 zone. I
put it in about 11:30 last night to conserve
some energy. They had a hard time scoring, so we
stayed with it.
``I hate to trick people. I like to line up and
play. But you've got to do what you've got to
do.''
Logan, the conference's leading scorer and
two-time player of the year, couldn't do
anything in the first half � he missed a pair of
uncontested layups and made only one shot.
Huggins described his best player as ``beat
up.''
Logan turned it up in the second half, but it
was the defense that made the difference by
holding Marquette to 33.8 percent shooting from
the field.
The Golden Eagles were defensive about their
inability to make shots, blaming themselves
instead of Cincinnati's strategy.
``We had open shots, they just weren't
falling,'' point guard Cordell Henry said.
Henry, who scored 24 and 27 points in
Marquette's first two tournament games, managed
only 11 points on 3-of-15 shooting. Dwyane Wade
led Marquette with 16 points.
Cincinnati has won all seven of the conference's
regular-season titles, and now three of its
tournaments. The last one was in 1998, when the
tournament was played on the Bearcats' home
court.
The crowd of 15,242 at a downtown arena gave the
Bearcats the home-court advantage Saturday in a
game that got as heated as Huggins' temper.
Logan got into a shoving match under the basket
after center Scott Merritt fouled him hard for
his fifth in the game. The officials had to step
in to restore calm as players exchanged shoves
and taunts.
Two minutes later, Cincinnati's Jason Maxiell
got an intentional foul for hitting Henry in the
abdomen, knocking him to the floor.
Marquette's Tom Crean, the conference's coach of
the year, was still upset a half-hour after the
game. Asked if he had feared the game was
getting out of hand, Crean paused for five
seconds, thought about his response and answered
with an edge to his voice.
``I'm just going to say this: They won today.
They deserved it. We didn't play well enough to
win,'' he said. ``It was a physical game.''
The teams split their season series. Marquette
ended the Bearcats' 20-game winning streak with
a 74-60 win in Milwaukee on Feb. 2, and
Cincinnati won the rematch 63-62 on Feb. 22.
Marquette got the best of it early Saturday.
Huggins raged at his ineffective front-line
players as Marquette got 11 of the first 14
rebounds and pulled ahead 18-13.
The Bearcats then unveiled their zone, and
Marquette's offense came to a halt. The Golden
Eagles kept trying to force the ball inside
against the packed-in D and made only four of 20
shots the rest of the half.
With Logan missing six of his seven shots in the
first half, it fell to Field Williams to get the
offense going. Cincinnati's 3-point specialist
hit two of them in a 10-point run that put the
Bearcats ahead to stay, 23-18.
Wade's one-handed dunk got the lead down to four
points early in the second half, but that was
the only shot the Golden Eagles would hit for
four minutes as Cincinnati stuck with the zone
and answered with a a 10-point spurt.
Logan made a 19-foot jumper and a 3-pointer �
both shots went in cleanly � as Cincinnati
opened a 41-27 lead. Logan later made a quick
burst on a fastbreak layup and hit a pullup
jumper as Cincinnati stretched the lead to 17
points.
Marquette never got closer than 11 again.
Copyright 2001
Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
02/23/2007 10:50:16 AM
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