Williams: Hate? Big personalities? It’s all long gone from the Crosstown Shootout

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June 11, 1999: UC and Xavier basketball coaches Bob Huggins, right, and Skip Prosser shared the time before the Reds battled the Indians at Cinergy Field as they chatted in the blue seats near home plate.

Ask columnist Jason Williams anything − sports or non-sports – and he’ll pick some of your questions and comments from his inbox and respond on Cincinnati.com. Email: [email protected]

Subject: Crosstown Shootout excitement

Message: The Crosstown Shootout is Saturday. Where’s all the excitement? Am I missing something?

Reply: The days of weeklong, fan and media buildup to the Xavier-UC rivalry are long gone. I covered college basketball for the Cincinnati Post in the early 2000s, and our editors required at least one story a day specifically about the rivalry for a week from both the Xavier and UC beat reporters. The coverage was similar from The Enquirer and TV stations.

You give the audience what they want. And back then, they couldn’t get enough Crosstown Shootout coverage. The rivalry had hate. It had characters. It had attitude.

It has none of that today.

I’m talking about from the players and coaches. The animosity is still there among a faction of long-time fans. The game itself is always sold out, intense and raucous. No fan will leave Fifth Third Arena on Saturday afternoon saying the game has lost its luster.

But several factors have quashed the pregame hype, and it seemed to start to diminish after polarizing coach Bob Huggins left UC in 2005.

Huggins let his players speak their minds to reporters. Terry Nelson guaranteed the Bearcats would ” blow out” Xavier in the 1992 Crosstown Shootout, telling then-Post reporter Bill Koch: “Xavier doesn’t have a chance.” The Bearcats did, indeed, blow out Xavier.

Having characters like UC coach Bob Huggins involved in the Crosstown Shootout was what made it special, columnist Jason Williams writes.

In 1994, Huggins refused to shake hands with then-XU coach Pete Gillen after the Musketeers won at Cincinnati…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/williams-hate-big-personalities-long-025028739.html

Author : The Enquirer

Publish date : 2024-12-13 02:50:00

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