Tales from the Cincinnati Bearcats Locker Room

by Michael Perry

  CAL RIPKEN, WHO?

  Around the middle of his senior year, in January 1996, Keith Gregor realized his one chance to land in the UC record books was with his consecutive games played streak.

  Make no mistake: It was important to him.

  “I’d be forever etched into the history books,” he said.

  The school record for consecutive games played was held by Dwight “Jelly” Jones, who competed in 112 in a row from 1979-83.

  In No. 109, Gregor turned his right ankle against Marquette at Shoemaker Center. He had scored 16 points in the first half and got injured in the first minute of the second half. UC would go on to win 91-70.

  It wasn’t just his streak that was in jeopardy; the next game four nights later was against rival Xavier. That would be Gregor’s last Crosstown Shootout, and the Lakota High School graduate didn’t want to miss it.

  He temporarily moved into his parents’ home in Cincinnati, and for three nights leading up to the Xavier game, Gregor didn’t sleep. He spent all night every night icing his ankle for 20 minutes, then taking ice off. Compression. More ice. No ice. Compression. More ice. No ice. Elevated foot. He watched west coast basketball games on ESPN and late-night movies on TBS.

  “You can play if you’re tired,” Huggins reminded him. “But you can’t play if you can’t walk.”

  Gregor tested his ankle the night before the XU game, making some cuts on the floor. He was about 90 percent. While loosening it up on game day, he actually weakened his ankle, and by tipoff he was hobbling.

  He played a total of 22 minutes off the bench, running out of gas at the end. Gregor finished with four points, four rebounds and three assists. The Bearcats won 99-90. The streak was alive at 110.

  The night he would tie “Jelly” Jones, UC was at home against DePaul. Gregor’s ankle was in bad shape, and Huggins told him he planned to rest him. Huggins said he’d let Gregor play at the end for a couple minutes to tie the record.

  “I thought, that’s kind of a cheap way to keep it alive,” Gregor said. “But OK, Coach, whatever you say.”

  UC struggled in the first half. Huggins kept going up to Gregor on the bench, saying, “Can we put you in now?” DePaul led 33-31 at halftime. Gregor felt OK.

  “I think I can go, Coach,” he told Huggins.

  “OK,” Huggins responded immediately. “You’re starting.”

  Gregor played the whole second half. UC beat the Blue Demons 71-61.

  He wouldn’t miss any games the rest of the way and finished with a school-record 131 consecutive games played.

  “I always go down there to Shoemaker when Huggins has got a sophomore who’s played a lot and tell him ‘This kid needs to be benched for a game,’” Gregor said.

  “(Steve) Logan broke most games played. That’s pretty good company to be in, I guess. I figure as long as Huggins is coaching, my streak is not going to be broken. If there’s anybody good enough as a freshman to come in and play there, they’ll probably be gone in three years.”

  Gregor’s record was surpassed in 2014 by Sean Kilpatrick, who played in 140 consecutive games. Gregor currently ranks seventh in games played.

  THE NICKNAME

  During the summer before he entered ninth grade, Melvin Levett was playing in the Ohio Sports Festival. During one game, he went up and tomahawk dunked over an opposing player. “He seemed to hang in the air forever,” said Tom Erzen, the assistant coach. “I remembered a professional basketball player who was named the helicopter and I thought it was appropriate to say that about Melvin. I started calling Melvin the helicopter. Soon everyone was calling Melvin the helicopter!”

  That didn’t stop in Cincinnati, especially after . . .

  ‬ THE DUNK

  UC vs. Alcorn State. December 3, 1997.

  “I remember it like it was yesterday,” Levett said.

  The Bearcats were 2-1 and had lost at home to Arizona State in the Preseason NIT Tournament at Shoemaker Center. Levett, a junior and one of the more talented players on the team, had averaged just 12 points in the first three games. He went three of 14 from the field in Game 3 against Morehead State.

  “I was in a funk a little bit, because of my performances at the beginning of the season,” Levett said. “I was kind of down on myself. Huggs was letting me have it pretty good throughout that week. There was a certain point at halftime (against Alcorn) when we had a little shouting match. I guess it made me just say, ‘OK, now it’s time.’”

  During the second half, Levett dunked twice in a row. But it was the third one that went down in UC folklore.

  D’Juan Baker fired up a shot from the left side behind the three-point line.

  “I saw it go up, and I just ran and jumped,” Levett said. “I never hesitated. I didn’t know where I was taking off from. I was going to get that basketball. I took off and I just kept going. I kept rising and rising.

  “It hit the rim and bounced off the top of the backboard, and it came right into my hands as I was floating over Bobby Brannen and another guy from Alcorn State. I just slammed it home.”

  Levett caught himself and ended up swinging on the rim. It would be called the Helicopter Dunk by many.

  “There was a lot that went into that,” Levett said. “That was pretty much the one to say, ‘I’ve arrived for this season. I’m here. Now is the time to play ball.’ The season took off for me from there.”

  In November 2001, Slam magazine included Levett among the 50 greatest dunkers of all time. He came in at No. 32, ahead of folks like Tracy McGrady, Chris Webber, Elgin Baylor, Scottie Pippen and Kevin Garnett. Topping the list (in order): Vince Carter, Michael Jordan, Dominique Wilkins, Julius Erving.

  IN A ZONE

  Less than three weeks later, Levett scored a career-high 42 points against Eastern Kentucky.

  After practice a couple days before the game, Levett stayed in Shoemaker Center and had a shooting contest with guard John Carson. They put up several hundred shots. Some of the players stuck around to watch.

  The touch stayed with him. When Levett was warming up before the EKU game, he couldn’t miss. Usually, as the adage goes, if a player doesn’t miss a shot during warmups, he’s in for a bad night.

  But Levett’s first shot in the game fell, and he thought he had perfect extension on his follow through. Every time he let go, swish, the ball went right in. His shot hardly even touched the rim. Levett made 16 of 24 field goal attempts and was 10 of 14 from three-point range.

  “It was one of those things that you watch on TV and you wish you were that guy in that moment, like when Mike (Jordan) had 63 in Boston or 69 against Cleveland,” Levett said. “You wish you could get in a zone like that. That day, I did. Whenever I am inconsistent with the form on my shot, I go back and watch that film.”

  LOVE YOU, MOM

  Ruben Patterson’s teammates learned a lot about him February 19, 1998.

  Patterson and Alex Meacham were rooming together on a road trip to UAB. The night before the game, the two were talking when Patterson started opening up.

  “He was talking about where he came from in Cleveland and how his goal was to get to the NBA and make lots of money,” Meacham said. “His dream was to buy his mother a car and a house and get her out of the ’hood. It was just a typical story of a guy wanting to do better for his family.

  “We stayed up until 1:30, 2:00 in the morning. All he talked about was his mom.”

  Finally, the two fell asleep with the television on. Around 6 a.m., there was a knock on the door. It was Huggins.

  Huggins took Patterson back to his room and delivered some horrific news: Patterson’s mother, Charlene Patterson, had died of a heart attack in her sleep at age 38.

  “Ruben was pretty shaken,” Levett said. “Basketball really didn’t matter at that point.”

  At the team’s shootaround the day of the game, Huggins tried to convince Patterson to go home to be with his family.

  “I’ll never forget this,” Meacham said. “Ruben said, �
�This is my family. I’m going to play this game.’”

  Ruben Patterson (23), an Associated Press honorable mention All-American in 1998, was selected by the Los Angeles Lakers in the second round of the NBA draft. Patterson played 10 years in the NBA and scored a total of 6,953 points for the Lakers, Seattle SuperSonics, Portland Trail Blazers, Denver Nuggets, Milwaukee Bucks, and Los Angeles Clippers. (Photo by Lisa Ventre/University of Cincinnati)

  Back at the hotel, Patterson took his shoes and wrote on them with marker: “Charlene Patterson, #23” and “I am going to miss you.”

  Then Patterson went out and had one of the best games of his career.

  He scored a career-high 32 points and added seven rebounds, three assists and three steals in 37 minutes in a 93-76 victory. “We needed to win this game, and I wanted to play well for my mom,” Patterson said that night after the game. “Every time I scored, everybody saw me point up.”

  “He was playing with an unbelievable amount of concentration defensively and offensively,” Meacham said. “And he had a glow to him while he played. After the game in the locker room, everybody was kind of crying. It was a real emotional thing. This is a weird thing to say but it was a good thing for our team in that it brought us a little closer together. And some guys saw a side of Huggins that they had never seen before. There was no doubt that Huggins, his staff and the players truly cared about Ruben and what happened.”

  “That just shows you the kind of heart he had to overcome something so huge,” Levett said of Patterson. “I remember after the game every guy going down to the pay phones in the hotel and waiting to call home to tell their parents they loved them.”

  THE AGONY OF DEFEAT

  There were some tough losses during the Huggins era. The following certainly ranked up there:

  UC was the No. 2 seed in the 1998 NCAA Tournament, and the selection committee sure set up an intriguing second-round matchup. After the Bearcats knocked off Northern Arizona in the first round, they earned a meeting with West Virginia.

  The subplots? For starters, this was Huggins’s alma mater, the school for which he starred as an Academic All-American in the 1970s. He also coached a year for the Mountaineers as a graduate assistant. Coincidentally, West Virginia was coached by Gale Catlett, who left as UC’s coach 20 years earlier, took over as the Mountaineers’ coach and opted not to retain a young assistant coach named Bob Huggins.

  Nice storylines, eh?

  Cincinnati uncharacteristically went out and committed 22 turnovers yet remarkably had a chance to win the game. UC led 74-72 with 7.1 seconds remaining.

  West Virginia inbounded the ball to Jarrod West, who dribbled to halfcourt and fired up a prayer. UC’s Patterson tipped the ball with his middle finger, changing the trajectory. It sailed into the basket for a three-pointer to win the game.

  “I think my face was in the floor,” Levett said. “I couldn’t believe it. I really thought we had a curse on us. If you watch the ball leave his hands, you’ll see the rotation on it. It’s fast, but as Ruben tips it, it slows down but gains a little bit more flight. If that shot’s harder, if Ruben doesn’t touch it, we go to the Sweet 16 and possibly the Final Four.”

  CREATING CAMARADERIE

  Teams are allowed to take off-season trips every four years. The advantages: The players get to play games, but more important, they get to bond.

  When UC went to Europe after the 1996-97 season, all the players shaved their heads bald. Except, of course, Bobby Brannen, who wasn’t going to cut his locks for anyone.

  One day after visiting Vatican City in Italy, Darnell Burton, Flint and Levett went to a nightclub. It was a hole-in-the-wall place. Very dark inside.

  Once they got seated, servers started bringing drinks, including bottles of champagne. Women were sitting with them. Nobody was speaking English, and the UC players didn’t know quite what was going on. After a while, Levett told Burton to find out why drinks were being brought to the table.

  An employee told the players they owed $500 in lira, Italy’s currency at the time.

  “What? We didn’t ask for this stuff,” the players protested.

  “They took us to the back of the club,” Levett said. “It reminded you of one of those situations in a movie where you’re in a mob joint in some underground place and they want to take you in the back and chop you up. It just happened so quickly. Damon was talking fast. It was so confusing.

  “We pull all the money out of our pockets and put it on the table and said, ‘This is all we’ve got.’ We didn’t get to $500, man. We were well short. We bolted out and walked down the street and we were quiet. Nobody said a word.”

  Now that’s bonding.

  “That was funny,” Burton said. “We were wondering why they were treating us like stars. We didn’t know they were keeping a tab on us. . . . We were a little scared. It was like one of those scenes from the mafia.”

  LOOKING INTO THE FUTURE

  He was a sophomore who had not yet established himself as a standout player. In fact, Kenyon Martin averaged fewer than 10 points a game and was not the kind of force that caused opposing coaches to alter their game plans.

  So there was no way to prepare for what Martin unleashed on DePaul on February 21, 1998. Try this on for size: 24 points, 23 rebounds, 10 blocked shots.

  “I was just being more aggressive than everybody,” Martin said. “I was grabbing everything and blocking every shot. Guys were scared to come to the hole.”

  Kenyon Martin (4) gives instructions to teammates Steve Logan (22), Pete Mickeal (32) and Kenny Satterfield (right). (Photo by Lisa Ventre/University of Cincinnati)

  It was only the 12th triple-double of any kind in UC history, and Martin was only the third player at the time to have one, joining Oscar Robertson and Rick Roberson. Robertson had 10 triple-doubles during his three seasons, and Roberson’s 16 points, 10 rebounds and 10 blocks came 30 years and one month earlier than Martin’s.

  “Just watching from the sideline, it was unreal,” said UC teammate Jermaine Tate, who was sitting out that season after transferring from Ohio State. “I hadn’t seen a performance like that by an individual player in a game. It seemed like they were just throwing him the ball. It was unbelievable.”

  Two years later, Martin would do it again. He finished with 28 points, 13 rebounds and 10 blocks against Memphis during his senior season.

  GOOD MOVE

  Martin did briefly consider leaving UC a year early for the NBA. Huggins was told by his NBA sources that Martin would be selected between Nos. 19 and 22 in the first round of the 1999 draft.

  When he met with Huggins, the coach asked: “What do you want to do?”

  Martin replied: “I want to win a national championship.”

  “That was the only discussion we ever had about leaving early,” Huggins said.

  CONFIDENCE BOOST

  Martin averaged 2.8 points a game as a freshman, 9.9 points as a sophomore and 10.1 points as a junior. He was steadily improving and had a legendary work ethic. But mentally, he did not approach every game as if he were the dominant player on the court until he was a senior.

  During the summer 1999, after his junior year, Martin was selected to the U.S. team for the World University Games in Palma del Morca, Spain. He was likely picked for his defense, to provide an intimidating presence near the basket.

  Martin brought much more. He would lead the gold-medal-winning team in scoring (13.9 ppg) and rebounding (6.6 rpg). Dayton’s Oliver Purnell was the coach.

  “A lot of people probably thought I was just going to be another guy on the team,” Martin said. “I came back with a different attitude about my game and my ability. That put me over the top. I worked the weight room hard. I worked on my game harder than I ever had. It always takes something for you to realize how good you can be. Those World University Games did it for me.”

  Walk-on Alex Meacham remembers bumping into Martin when he returned from Spain. They were on their way to play pick-up games in S
hoemaker Center. Meacham asked how the Games experience had been.

  “I’ll never forget this,” Meacham said. “Kenyon said, ‘I don’t mean to brag, but I was probably the best guy on that team.’ When he left for those games, he was a little nervous. He knew he was going to be there with some of the best players in the country.”

  In Shoemaker, team trainer Jayd Grossman told Meacham that he knew the trainer for the World University Games team, and the trainer had said Martin was the best player on the team—by far. That confirmed what Martin had said.

  That day, Martin dominated the pick-up games.

  “It came down to one thing: Kenyon knew he was a good player, but I don’t think Kenyon knew he was that good of a player,” Meacham said. “He worked out the same, shot the same amount. It was a mental thing.”

  Huggins said a few other things happened in the summer of 1999: Martin learned to shoot free throws; he built up his leg strength; and he spent a lot of time with former Bearcat Corie Blount, who taught Martin “how to be a professional,” Huggins said.

  The World University Games also helped Martin get past a game during his junior season that Huggins thinks affected him.

  The Bearcats lost 62-60 at Charlotte on January 14, 1999. Trailing by two, UC threw the ball into Martin, who was fouled intentionally with three seconds left. “It was a gamble,” 49ers coach Bobby Lutz said afterward. Martin missed the front end of a one-and-one free throw situation, and Cincinnati lost.

  “Kenyon’s such a good guy, he never wanted to hurt the team,” Huggins said. “So I think he didn’t want the ball at the end of games after that because he didn’t have a lot of confidence in making free throws. I think the World University Games helped him with that because he went to the line and made them.”

  Martin made 13 of 19 free throws for the U.S. team, which included UC teammate Pete Mickeal.

  HAPPY NEW YEAR

  UC players may complain privately about Huggins when they’re on the team, but after their eligibility expires, most are extremely loyal to Huggins. All he has to do is ask for something, and it’s done.