Four CovCath connections bring a bit of Northern Kentucky to Cincinnati Bearcat basketball

By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter

Moving on to new challenges in a new territory is never easy. Take the Cincinnati Bearcats basketball program, for example.

UC’s first year in its step up to the Big 12 hasn’t been easy. New opponents, new officials, new travel, new everything, have made it tough at times. But even tougher is this: It’s the best basketball season – maybe ever – in the Big 12. Even Kansas is having a tough time of it.

And here come the Bearcats into what is arguably the best basketball league in the nation. But for four folks in the UC basketball program, there’s a built-in support system, one they’ve taken with them, to some extent.

One a veteran team trainer, the next a heralded transfer, another an assistant coach and the fourth, a freshman manager, all have a shared Covington Catholic High School history.

BOB MANGINE has the most history here, by far. History at both UC and in Northern Kentucky. A Pittsburgh native, Bob fell in love with the hills here on a drive through Edgewood that reminded him of home when he was living in flat West Chester, on the Ohio side of the River,

That was that, says Bob, officially the Senior Associate AD and Physical Therapy Residence Director – and basketball team trainer. Northern Kentucky would be his home – first Edgewood, now on the Triple Crown golf course in Union.

“I’ll never move back,” Bob says, “all my kids went to school here at Beechwood and CovCath.” And all, except daughter Angela, in veterinary school at the University of Pennsylvania where she plans to be a specialist working with racehorses.

One son, Matt, has taken over the Matthew Mangine Jr. “One Shot” Foundation, whose goal is to educate about the need for developing and executing emergency action plans and the expanded use of Automated Electronic Defibrillators (AED’s) to prevent sudden cardiac deaths in athletes like the one that tragically took the life of his grandson, Matt Jr., a 16-year-old soccer player at St. Henry.

For Bob, those years working with Beechwood and CovCath, helped produce 15 state championships while developing Cincinnati Orthopedics’ cutting-edge community-based program that had UC asking him back where he’d earned his master’s in 1980. Bob agreed, returning in 2002 and taking over as football trainer in 2005.

“After all that winning at Beechwood and CovCath, I didn’t want to come back at first, I had to think about it,” he says, admitting he was spoiled from his time at the Northern Kentucky schools. And maybe a bit from his days as an undergrad trainer at Pitt where the football coaches were the legendary Johnny Majorsand Jackie Sherrill.

But times in his profession have clearly changed. “In our business, we’re now focused more on injury prevention and management,” Bob says. “We’re focusing on analytics, figuring out the loads (on athletes) in practices and games. Overload is the biggest issue now for athletes who spend 11 months a year on their sport.”

Bob, the head aquatics trainer for the U.S. Olympic Team in 1996 and a member of the Covington Catholic Athletics Hall of Fame, has seen the Bearcats as members of the Big East, Conference USA and now the Big 12, whose basketball he describes as “physical and extremely competitive.”

There’s a lot of work keeping Bearcat athletes ready to compete. Which gets us to the next CovCath guy.

CJ FREDRICK puts a familiar face on the focus of athletic injury and management – and of the Bearcats being just a few points short so often with their best long-range shooter unavailable.

With eight of 11 Big 12 losses by five or fewer points, the Bearcats are officially the unluckiest team statistically in the NCAA with all but two conference games decided by single digits unlike the 90-66 romp over NKU in December.

The grad student transfer took CovCath to a state championship in 2018 when he won almost every honor a high school player can win in Kentucky after scoring 111 points in four Sweet 16 games as the state tourney MVP for the 35-4 Colonels.

As a Hyde Park resident, CJ chose to come to CovCath where his uncle, Joe Fredrick – a former outstanding guard at Notre Dame and one of the principals in ESPN’s most-viewed 30 for 30 series, “Catholics vs. Convicts” – coached. His grandfather, the late Charlie Fredrick, had been a star at Newport Catholic before attending Notre Dame on a football scholarship and then a career as well-respected athletic director at the Greenhills and Forest Park school systems in Cincinnati.

“Notre Dame was my dream school but it didn’t work out,” says CJ, a 6-foot-3 three-point specialist. He ended up at Iowa for three years, then came back to Lexington and Rupp Arena – where he’d had so much success – for two more. And this year, he’s back home in Cincinnati. But the injury issues that have plagued him in college have followed him.

“First of all, he’s a wonderful young man,” Mangine says of Fredrick, who after missing a full season his first year at UK after surgery on his left hamstring – not to mention having a screw and a rod surgically inserted after other injuries — now has had an ongoing injury issue with his other hamstring.

The good news is that after a redshirt freshman year at Iowa, then an additional season the NCAA awarded athletes because of Covid and then his injury year at Kentucky in 2021-22, Fredrick still can come back and play next season.

“It’s 100 percent frustrating,” Fredrick says as he gets ready for practice, “frustrating but not discouraging . . . I’ve always done the right thing in the offseason . . . .”

And yet, even last season at Kentucky, when he appeared in 26 games, making 15 starts, averaging 6.1 points and 1.5 assists a game, he missed three games with a hand injury, four more with a rib injury.

And now this year at UC, he’s started 10 of the 15 games he’s appeared in, with almost identical stats as last year at UK – 6.1 points a game while shooting 42.6 percent (23 of 54) from three-point range.

Those numbers aren’t far off from his redshirt sophomore season at Iowa, where he started 27 games and shot 47.4 percent from long range and averaged 7.5 points a game. Or from his redshirt freshman season when he was named to the All-Big Ten Freshman Team after averaging 10.2 points a game while shooting 46.1 percent from long range.

How good was that season? So good that CJ became the only player from a major conference dating back to 1993 with 65 or more assists, 32 or fewer turnovers and 46 percent or more from three-point range.

CJ “tweaked” his right hamstring in the Dayton game this season, but then he notes when asked about it that there’s “the rod in my shin . . . and plantar fasciitis . . . I’m used to it,” he says.

His career has had many benefits, says CJ, who plans to coach after his grad work this year and next. “It’s awesome to have played in three of the big conferences – the Big Ten, the SEC and the Big 12” – as different as they are.

In the Big Ten, “they beat you up.” In the SEC, “it’s the opposite, they have athletes.” And in the Big 12? “A combination of the two,” CJ says, “it’s hard not to say it’s (the Big 12) the best” this year.

CJ has some favorite places to play. “The Barn at Minnesota,” he says of the 1950’s 14,500-seat Williams Arena. “Tennessee has one of the nicest (Thompson-Boling), it has an NBA feel.” Then there’s Iowa State’s Hilton Coliseum and Purdue’s Mackey Arena. And of course, the classics – Kansas’ Phog Allen Fieldhouse and UK’s Rupp Arena.

“But Cincinnati’s home,” he says, which is where a big July wedding will happen for him and former UK basketball player, Blair Green from Harlan County, that will have former teammates from both Iowa and UK in the wedding party. Their bond was cemented in a year at UK when both were rehabbing from serious injuries that kept them out of basketball.

JAKE THELEN is one of the many basketball-playing Thelens from Northern Kentucky, dating back to his grandfather, Jerry, a 6-10 star with then Villa Madonna (now Thomas More) who got some preseason run with the NBA’s Cincinnati Royals. At 6-6, Jake starred at CovCath, being named to the Kentucky-Indiana and Kentucky-Ohio All-Star games.

While he could have walked on locally for Division I programs, Jake ended up at then-Division II Bellarmine in Louisville where a three-year career as a starter in every game saw him named as a consensus All-American in 2015 and the NCAA Most Outstanding Player in the NCAA’s Midwest Regional for a 31-4 Bellarmine team that made it to the Final Four. In his senior season, Jake averaged a double-double – 18.6 points a game and 10.7 rebounds.

But Edgewood-native Jake’s path to a spot as a full assistant was hardly a direct drive up I-71 to Cincinnati. It’s taken him through The Netherlands for a pro stopover at Horsens, then back to Louisville to coach at Louisville St. X before stopping at Indiana and working for Tom Crean, who took Jake to Georgia as director of basketball operations, at 25, the youngest “DOBO” at a Power Five school.

“I loved Athens,” he says, “an awesome college town.” And no better place to learn everything there is to know about how big-time college basketball works – from meals to travel to tickets to practice planning, film study and recruiting then as the basketball operations director.

But now he’s back almost home, “It’s cool with CJ and now (manager) Brian (Cheek) has been great as a manager. And of course, Bob’s the best.”

In fact, CJ was the one who got him here with new UC Coach Wes Miller. “We were both trying to recruit CJ,” he said before Miller called him and asked Jake if he’d be interested in coming to UC with him.

“I told him I’d like to get closer to home,” Jake said, and so here he is. First as basketball operations director, now as director of player development and full assistant coach.

“It’s been awesome,” Jake says, “and a challenge in the Big 12 with great coaches, great players. It makes you better. It’s the best league in the country. And while all losses are bad, it’s been good for us to be in this league. And we have really good kids. They want to win.”

They’ll get their chance Tuesday afternoon in the conference tournament in Kansas City as the 11th-seed Bearcats (18-13, 7-11 Big 12) go against 14th-seed West Virginia, a team UC beat Saturday in the final regular season game, with a chance to get a win under their belts to start the tourney.

One of the best parts of coming home, Thelen says, is getting to know “the UC fans. “They’re the best. The atmosphere for games with our students and fans, they do an unbelievable job here.”

BRIAN CHEEK has a job as one of the 14 managers it takes to keep a big-time basketball program going. A freshman from Hebron, after his experience as a manager at CovCath, Cheek is learning the ropes at UC.

“I loved everything about it,” Brian says of his four years with Colonel basketball. “There are a lot of similarities . . . but the travel is different. We’re no longer in the blue school bus,” he says after trips to Texas Tech and TCU.

There’s another big difference. “In high school, the players pack for themselves. Here, we pack for the players.”

He’s majoring in sports administration, says Cheek whose nickname from the players is an elongated “Cheeeeeeeeeek” as they walk by greeting him. One thing the manager’s position gives him is “a year-round job where he gets co-op credit.”

And having his Colonel connections “is pretty cool,” Brian says. His CovCath coaches helped him get the UC job. And now “we always talk about CovCath. CJ was super when I got here.”

His favorite part so far: “the game-day experience and getting behind the scenes for every game and practice. You realize how much detail there is . . . and you’re part of the game.”

Brian is “usually behind the bench” and he’s also at times the guy mopping up the sweat on the floor.

Although the most fun he has “are the manager games” when the manager teams from Xavier and Dayton, for example, meet up for basketball. “I’m probably the worst player on our team,” but Brian doesn’t care.

He’s here and having fun, working hard and doing what he loves to do.

Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @dweber3440.