The Man in Black, Bob Huggins, is gone, replaced as the Cincinnati coach by Andy Kennedy.
Kennedy is balding and showed up for his team’s game against Marquette on Saturday dressed in a gray suit, blue shirt and natty striped tie.
Yet there was still that familiar swagger and toughness about the Bearcats (13-2, 2-0 Big East), who conclusively proved their grit by escaping from the Bradley Center with a 70-66 victory.
Cincinnati simply took this one away from the Golden Eagles (11-4, 1-1), who led by nine points with less than 13 minutes to go. The Bearcats earned the victory with their resolve, aggressiveness and a huge helping of forward Eric Hicks.
Hicks is a 6-foot-6-inch, 245-pound block of granite who put up a triple-double with 22 points, 12 rebounds and 10 of his team’s 18 blocked shots.
He also was there for his team as the game wound down with Cincinnati up by three points, flying at Golden Eagle Jerel McNeal as he put up a three-pointer that would have sent the game into overtime.
But McNeal’s shot bounced high off the rim and after grabbing the rebound and getting fouled, Bearcats guard Jihad Muhammad made a final free throw with just a second remaining.
As Muhammad shot his free throw, Hicks stood at halfcourt, called out to a pair of his teammates and flexed for fellow seniors Armein Kirkland and James White.
“He’s a real strong-willed individual. He’s the cornerstone of their team. There’s no doubt about it,” Marquette coach Tom Crean said, implicitly acknowledging the appropriateness of that gesture.
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“Our upperclassmen have been resilient,” said Kennedy, recalling the chaos after Huggins was axed abruptly in August. “I told them when this whole thing went down, this is a rough hand we’ve been dealt. But the reality is this is your senior year. This is how you’re going to be remembered, fair or not. We cannot allow ourselves to use these circumstances as an excuse.
“They’ve never done that . . . [and] we continued to be resilient, to fight and in the second half Eric Hicks just refused to let us lose.”
Marquette, which was coming off a stunning victory Tuesday over Connecticut, appeared on its way to a second straight Big East victory after the game’s first 20 minutes.
The Golden Eagles attacked the basket and met little resistance while building a 10-point halftime lead.
“We addressed that [lack of resistance] rather aggressively at the half,” Kennedy said.
The result was quickly obvious. In the first 3 1/2 minutes of the second half, the Golden Eagles attacked the basket eight times. Five times their shots were knocked away.
That set the tone for the final 20 minutes and slowly the Bearcats took over. They pushed Marquette out of its offense and they made it pay for defensive lapses.
In the end, they simply were tougher than Marquette.
“I don’t think we were nearly patient enough or poised enough to keep the lead,” Crean said.
Cincinnati had the poise.
“We’ve been through a lot of adversity,” Hicks said. “We don’t want to go out [poorly].”
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