You play the game with the players you have, not the players you'd like to have
 CBS has a good article on how the Bearcats' lineup makes no sense and yet, or maybe because of that, is giving the rest of the teams so much trouble.
Cincinnati coach Bob Huggins has been confronted with the evidence, which is overwhelming. His team is guilty -- guilty of being short where it should be tall, tall where it should be short, this where it should be that.
The Bearcats are guilty of first-degree unorthodoxy, a fact Huggins doesn't dispute. Instead he nods his head at a retired jersey hanging on the wall at Fifth Third Arena, where unorthodox Cincinnati had just battered DePaul 83-54 Thursday.
"I'd like to have Kenyon Martin," he said. "But we don't. We've got what we've got."
What Huggins has is a nonsensical starting lineup. His two wing guards are bigger than his two post players. The only point guard-shaped Bearcat in the starting lineup, 6-foot Jihad Muhammad, isn't a point guard at all.
These are among the reasons why Cincinnati was picked by league coaches to finish third this season in Conference USA, despite finishing first eight times in the league's nine-year history.
Good reasons.
Wrong reasons.
--CBS Sportsline |
Posted by Rob Bernard on Friday, January 07, 2005 at
1:56 PM in
Cincinnati
