By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
For a night, every couple of years, the Northern Kentucky Norse get to be one of the big boys, with a near-full Truist Arena, a big-time opponent, lots of excitement all around and a student body that’s energized — and in their seats. This is, indeed, the way college basketball should be.
The way it was when No. 18 Cincinnati visited the home where the Bearcats played the 2019-2020 season when their campus arena was being rebuilt. That’s also the season UC reached No. 5, its highest ranking since 2000.
NkU’s Truist Arena was also the place the Bearcats went down hard just two years ago, 64-51, after an 11-point second half for NKU’s only win in the 11-game cross-the-river series.
“A great atmosphere,” NKU Coach Darrin Horn said before talking about the game. “Our students were fantastic.” Even more so, they were here. Of the six sections set aside for the NKU students. More than five-and-a-half were filled for this crowd of 7,485 – largest since the last time UC came to Highland Heights.
But it was more than the students, it was everywhere. Two dozen media had assigned seats in two separate sections. There were game notes, rosters, stats. All those second deck “THIS SECTION CLOSED” signs were gone. There were some 6,000 gold “NORSE UP” towels draped across seat backs. Sure, there was a great deal of red-and-black mixed in with the fans wearing gold and black NKU gear, but lots of both everywhere. There were even two end-of-the-court full bars with lots of customers.
One thing is clear: UC’s unbeaten Bearcats are legit. Maybe better than that No. 18 ranking this week after a 76-60 win thanks to a strong second half against the now 0-4 Norse who, if this game is the standard the rest of the way, could well have another shot at making the NCAA in March.
Four minutes after intermission, NKU trailed by just one, 41-40, as the Norse, led by veterans Sam Vinson and Trey Robinson aggressively challenged the bigger, deeper Bearcats. In fact, outrebounding UC 36-27 for the game, NKU never backed off there.
But the Norse did lose track defensively of Simas Likosius, the third Lithuanian in this game with the NKU pair of Hubertas Pivorius and Paulis Rapolis – who was shooting 73 percent from long range and didn’t drop off much on this night, nailing all five of his long-range attempts in the second half and six of nine for the game as the 6-foot-8 guard transfer from Butler led all scorers with 18 points.
“The game plan was not to let him shoot it at all,” Horn said of where it all started to go wrong in that second half. “He was so wide open a couple of times, he wasn’t sure if he should shoot it.”
But as he was quoted after the game, Lukosius was pretty sure of one thing when he shot: It was going in. “I want to shoot it every time I can get it off,” he was quoted after the game. Those five bombs in the second half were the difference.
“We just didn’t defend like you have to,” Horn said, against a team as good as UC, even when the Bearcats were “playing without their best player” – 6-6 guard Dan Skillings.
“This is the best team Wes (Miller) has had,” Horn said of the “second Top 20 team (in addition to Purdue) that NKU has faced in the early going.
But this was not a totally negative moment as Thursday’s loss at the buzzer to Nicholls, a team UC beat 86-49 the next night. “Our guys fought, dominated them on the boards,” Horn said. “But that’s still not OK. We didn’t put a complete game together.”
But they did leave their coach upbeat at game’s end. “This team’s going to get there,” Horn said, “I’m really excited . . . there’s a lot of good to take away . . . when we play the right way, we can play with anybody.”
Just not for 26 minutes in a 40-minute game. “That’s something we coaches have to figure out.”
The play of his two leaders, the 6-5 Vinson coming off ACL surgery that took away the second half of last season, and the 6-7 Robinson, who came back for a graduate year, seemed to fire Horn up with Vinson getting his shooting back, hitting on five of eight the first half on the way to a team-high 16 points.
“We wanted to attack inside out,” Horn said. As they did.
Robinson scored a dozen points with a game-high tying (with 6-9 Keeyan Itejere) eight rebounds. Itejere and grad transfer guard Josh Dilling added eight points each for NKU.
Just not quite a match for the Bearcats who flipped the script from the last time here when they hit on just four of 29 shots in the second half in that loss to NKU. On this night, the Bearcats hit an almost unimaginable 73.9 percent (17 of 23) from the field after intermission. Four of their six dunks came in the second half combined with all those Lukosius bombs.
While UC improved from 40 percent shooting in the first half, NKU was going the other way, from 54.2 percent shooting (13 of 24) the first half to just 35.1 percent (13 of 32) the second half against a Bearcat defense that did not let up.
“Tonight’s a step in the right direction,” Horn said of those first 26 minutes for NKU, “but we’re not there yet.”
FOOTNOTED: Grad transfer CJ Fredrick, Kentucky’s Gatorade Player of the Year after leading Covington Catholic to the 2018 state championship before five years at Iowa and Kentucky, played two minutes for UC, coming off another injury after missing an entire season at Kentucky and 25 games at UC a year ago with injuries.
BOX SCORE
CINCINNATI 32 44–76
NORTHERN KY. 28-32—60
CINCINNATI (4-0): Lukosius 6-9 6-9 0-0 18, Mitchell 6-9 0-1 0-0 12, James 5-12 1-2 0-0 11, Hickman 4-7 2-5 0-0 10, Bandaogo 3-5 0-0 2-2 8, Page 4-6 0-0 0-0 8, Betsey 2-4 2-4 1-4 7, Thomas 1-5 0-1 0-0 2, Reed 0-1 0-0 0-0 0, Fredrick 0-0 0-0 0-0 0; TOTALS: 31-58 11-22 3-6 76.
NORTHERN KENTUCkY (0-4): Robinson 5-10 0-0 2-2 12, Vinson 7-17 1-3 1-2 16, Itejere 4-7 0-0 0-0 8, Dilling 3-5 1-2 1-2 8, Pivorius 0-1 0-1 0-0 0, Pettus 2-9 1-5 0-0 5, Gherezgher 2-5 1-3 0-0 5, Rapolis 1-2 0-0 0-0 2, Wells 2-5 0-0 0-2 4; TOTALS 26-61 4-14 4-8 60.