Another March Madness Meltdown?

After the crippling overtime loss to Marquette and a crucial stretch of three games remaining on the Bearcat's schedule this season, they cannot afford to collapse and let their hopes of reaching the big dance fall short. Sound familiar?

In Mick Cronin's past three years at UC, he has done some good and dissapointing things with the basketball program. His win totals have increased every year, yet they just haven't been able to get past that magic number of 20, and his team hasn't yet made it into the NCAA Tournament. This year is no different. In fact, some may argue that it's worse.

"Enough is enough. He's had four years to build a team, and this one looks actually worse than last year's,student Randall Adkins posted. "The cats have to win two out of their next three to match last year's win total, and I don't see that happening."

He has a good point. The Bearcat's remaining games include at No. 8 West Virginia, where they will embark on "Huggin's Fest" part 3, at home against No. 3 Villanova and will finish the season at No. 11 Georgetown. Sound like a tall order?

Naturally, as Cincinnatians, we have this instinctive pessimistic outlook on things. After all, our sports teams have endured the most unbelievable heartache in the past few decades, leading some to believe in a curse. While I wouldn't go that far quite yet, the list of bad luck is impressive: both Super Bowl XVI and XXIII ended with deflating drives from the great Joe Montana, we finally land an all-century center fielder who then proceeds to injure his leg so much that a hamstring can now be referred to as a "Griffey", our greatest athlete is banned from the Hall of Fame, arguably one of the all-time best college basketball coaches gets chased out of town as an example, our first NFL playoff game in 15 years ended on the second play, and on, and on, and on,

Perhaps it's the attitude we all share that causes some of the misfortune.

UC student Cassi Rollens blogs:
"I wonder if the overall defeatist attitude that we have as cincy sports fans affects the way our teams play here at UC. When Brian Kelly was up in the air you couldn't convince anyone he'd stay. Before the sugarbowl, you couldn't convince anyone that we'd win. And now, no one has any hope for the basketball team. Maybe if the city could back our school, a little more power of positive self-thought would empower us to win more games, or at least believe in ourselves a little more."

After the dissapointment that last year's UC team gave us with an 18-10 record, only to lose their last four and play thier way out of the NCAA Tournament, expectations of Mick Cronin's cats are not high. In order to make the tournament they would have to beat two top-ten teams and cement the season with at least one win in the Big East Tournament, giving them 19 total wins. That seems to be a pipedream at this point, but no one really saw last year's collapse coming. Maybe this is the year they play their way into the NCAA Tournament.