Unabated Sports

After a healthy weekend of college basketball, involving a wild weekend overall for the Big East, and UC finally getting a win over a noted conference opponent, I am still somewhat bewildered by something that occured during the Crosstown Shootout.
Again, as an outsider to Cincinnati who simply enjoyed the game from a local watering hole, I have to admit that ESPN's coverage was a little dubious.
Considering all the coverage we put into it, and all the local hype during the week, as soon as the game got on national television, the story went right back to one thing: Bob Huggins.
After being so entrenched in the local details, and following the story of the fantastic job that Andy Kennedy has done with this Bearcat team, I have to admit it was a little nationally sobering if you will, to see ESPN reverting right back to the same old faithful.

Maybe not only this rivalry, but UC basketball on the whole, or maybe even Cincinnati area basketball in general took a bigger hit than many have realized as a result of his departure.
Overall, they did a good job with coverage of the rivalry for what it is, but I was stuck with the coverage of Hugs more than anything. And who was that dopey guy sitting with him at various points of the game, waving his hands at that camera like a goofball? Is Huggins suddenly rolling around with a random entourage that doesn't know how to act once the cameras get rolling?
Huggins almost had this look on his face of man who had pulled off a major heist or something. He comes back into the spotlight on the biggest basketball night of the year for the city, in an area that he once proclaimed an unsafe place for his players, and dominated coverage!
What stones he has to just waltz into Cintas Center, as if people don't absolutely loathe him there, and hang out and watch a game like nothing ever happened. Huggins knew exactly what he was doing that night, and he was proving to the rest of the country that he is still a national name, with national pull. For what was an absolutely great basketball game, it nearly got hijacked by a guy who's not even coaching.
He essentially single handedly reduced the game to being described as the UC 'not being coached by Bob Huggins anymore' Bearcats, and their rival, oh wait, yeah Xavier.
Good thing this game went into overtime, because if it hadn't the rest of the country might have forgotten about anyone related to basketball in Cincinnati, not named Bob Huggins.