By Dan Weber NKyTribune sports reporter
“Only March matters” has been the mantra for NKU Coach Darrin Horn.
And it’s worked out pretty well for the defending Horizon League champs who are shooting for their fifth NCAA trip in eight years this season. That’s why the Norse play so many tough early season road games.
That’s NKU’s toughen-up time. But Sunday was a different story. In the third of a three-game series with Cincinnati (two away, one home), NKU was unable to duplicate the program’s best win in the last decade – last season’s 64-51 over a Bearcat team that could not solve NKU’s difficult one-of-a-kind defense.
Not a problem for this unbeaten UC team that put up 90 points while holding NKU to 66 in a romp that had the Bearcats outshooting, outrebounding, out-assisting, out-everything-ing an outmanned NKU team with only two players – Marques Warrick and Sam Vinson – who looked like they could stay on the Fifth-Third Arena court with the now 4-0 Cats in front of a crowd of 10,018.
NKU (1-3) meanwhile hasn’t won a road game. But the hope is they’re getting toughened up and by March, Warrick (19 points) and Vinson (15 points, four rebounds, two assists, two steals, a block and a turnover) will have several others step up to help out.
“Those two are really good players,” said UC sophomore guard Dan Skillings Jr., referencing Warrick and Vinson. The 6-foot-6 tough matchup out of Philadelphia’s Roman Catholic High School led the Bearcats with a career-high 25 points and made it look easy.
“We just kept it simple, didn’t try to do too much against their zone,” Skillings said as UC pulled away with a 12-2 run the last 3:25 of the first half and didn’t look back after establishing a 45-31 halftime edge.
“That’s a team I respect a lot,” UC Coach Wes Miller said of the Norse, who we were told chose not to come to the postgame presser, talking only on the NKU radio broadcast. Too bad. All four Cincinnati TV stations were here on this no-Bengals Sunday.
But the Bearcats had lots to say about NKU. “That’s a team I respect a lot,” Miller said of the reason he didn’t pull his starters despite leading by as many as 25 points.
“The main reason,” he explained, is because of how good NKU is, how good Marques Warrick and Sam Vinson are . . . and Darrin’s (Horn) a great coach.”
There was also the memory of a year ago when NKU, in front of a sold-out Truist Arena crowd, limited UC to 51 points with just 11 in the second half on a mere four field goals for NKU’s first and only win in the now-10-game series.
“It’s not really a man, it’s not really a zone,” Miller said of the NKU defense, trying to show his pop culture chops by “it’s like that show ‘Scary Things’,” then realizing he got that wrong before correcting it to “Stranger Things.”
NKU’s famous “Fist” defense wasn’t scary on this day but pretty strange looking in allowing UC to score 15 points more than NKU allowed against the Pac-12’s Washington in a 75-67 road loss last week in Seattle.
Skillings had plenty of help from South Carolinian Day Day Thomas, who knocked down 20 points on eight-of-11 shooting and 6-11 junior Victor Lakhin, a Russian national, who scored 14 points and grabbed a matching 14 rebounds. USC had no answer for Lakhin, or all the physically stronger Bearcats on the boards as they were outrebounded, 45-30, while giving up 18 offensive rebounds, a category where NKU usually has the edge.
But UC was having none of that on this day. “They play a really smart zone,” Skilling said, so after last year’s disastrous offensive outing, the holdover Bearcats made sure the new guys picked up on the challenge. “We were just piggy-backing off that experience,” Skillings said.
The way the Bearcats dominated on the boards, they could have been piggy-backing on the smaller NKU players. Which will be the challenge for this NKU team.
How do they defend a big man like Lakhin down low? How do they keep athletic teams off the offensive boards. Although the good news is that in the Horizon League, there really aren’t players like Lakhin and Skillings.
And maybe more importantly, how do the Norse knock down some shots. NKU came into Fifth-Third Arena shooting just 42.0 percent from the field and 28.3 from three-point range. And then hit on just 26 of 64 shots (40.6 percent) from the field and a much worse 20.0 percent (4 of 20) from three.
Norse notes: Despite just a dozen miles between campuses, the Norse did not bring their cheerleaders or almost any fans . . . After the game, UC’s Miller had high praise for the Bearcats’ longtime trainer, Northern Kentuckian Bob Mangine. “Bob Mangine’s the greatest trainer and the greatest human being. He takes care of all of us,” Miller said . . . former Kentucky Mr. Basketball for Covington Catholic and UK transfer CJ Fredrick started for the Bearcats, played 24:37 minutes and scored three points on one-of-six shooting.
BOX SCORE
NKU 31 35–66
UC 45 45—90
NORTHERN KENTUCKY: Itejere 5-0-0-10, Robinson 3-1-0-7, Vinson 5-1-4-15, Warrick 7-1-4-19, Bradley 3-0-2-8, Meyer 2-0-0-4, Ipassou 0-0-0-0, Well 1-1-0-3, Israel 0-0-0-0, Pettus 0-0-0-0, TOTALS: 26-4-10-66.
CINCINNATI: Lakhin 6-1-1-14, Oguama 2-0-0-4, Thomas 8-2-2-20, Fredrick 1-1-0-3, Newman 4-0-1-9, Skillings Jr. 8-3-6-25, Lukosius 3-1-0-7, James 2-1-0-5, Reed 1-1-0-3, Anthony 0-0-0-0, TOTALS: 35-10-10-90.
Attendance 10,018.
Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @dweber3440.