No. 4 Cincinnati Hangs On In OT

Down three, 39 seconds left, other guys have the ball. A tough situation? Not for No. 4 Cincinnati.

The Bearcats used their defense and Melvin Levett's buzzer-beater to force overtime, then got two 3-pointers by Alvin Mitchell and one more defensive surge for an intense 62-61 victory over No. 17 Minnesota on Wednesday night.

"I am glad it's over," said Cincinnati coach Bob Huggins. "They are good. ... This was a great win for us."

It very nearly was the first loss for the Bearcats (8-0), who got little help from foul-plagued center Kenyon Martin, shot just 28 percent in the second half and went scoreless for more than five minutes in one stretch.

That allowed Minnesota (6-1) to overcome its own shooting woes and an eight-point deficit, but the Golden Gophers wasted their chance to put the game away, too.

Two turnovers in a 15-second stretch late in regulation hurt the most as Minnesota missed a chance at its best start since the 1976-77 team won its first 11 games.

"It's real frustrating," said backup center Kyle Sanden, nearly the hero with a 3-pointer with six seconds left in regulation. "We had them beat, but things happened that you can't control. Things go the wrong way sometimes."

Mitchell, a backup guard, led Cincinnati with 12 points, eight of them in overtime and all of them after halftime. Levett scored 11 points, five below his average, on 3-for-13 shooting as the Bearcats remained perfect in six games against Minnesota under Huggins. That includes a 91-88 overtime victory at Williams Arena in 1994 that was a near duplicate of Wednesday's game.

Quincy Lewis led Minnesota with 24 points and Miles Tarver had a season-high 11.

The

The Golden Gophers fell just short in their bid to upset the Bearcats. (AP)

After missing nine of their first 10 shots to start the second half and falling behind 34-26, the Gophers reeled off 11 straight points, topped by Kevin Clark's three-point play for a 37-34 lead with 9:35 left.

The Bearcats rallied to tie it at 46, one of 11 ties in the game, on Levett's free throws with 1:50 left. But Lewis sank a 3-pointer 29 seconds later, and Minnesota then harassed Cincinnati into a shot-clock violation.

After a timeout with 39 seconds left the Gophers had the lead, the ball and, it seemed, the victory.

"I was thinking like, `Oh, God, here we go,"' Levett said. "I didn't want to lose, but I had it in the back of my mind."

That's when the Bearcats used their own defensive pressure to force a turnover, and Jermaine Tate dunked a rebound at the other end to make it 49-48 with 22 seconds left.

"Play Bearcat defense," Huggins told his players during the timeout with 39 seconds left. "We had to turn the pressure up."

Clark then broke free on a 2-on-1, but instead of pulling the ball out to run time off the clock he stumbled out of control into Tate for a charge. Tate, who transferred from Ohio State and played his first game in nearly two years Monday, then hit both ends of a 1-and-1 to put Cincinnati up 50-49 with 17 seconds left.

Sanden, a 6-foot-10 backup center, hit a 3-pointer to make it 52-50 with six seconds left, but without taking a timeout the Bearcats got the ball to Levett, whose shot as time expired forced overtime.

The teams traded baskets in the extra period until Mitchell's 3-pointer with two minutes left gave Cincinnati a 59-58 lead. Mitchell hit another 56 seconds later for a 62-58 lead.

The Gophers cut the deficit to 62-61 on a free throw by Lewis and a steal and layup by Terrance Simmons with 46 seconds left. They had a chance to win it in the final seconds, but Clark missed a driving layup with about three seconds left and Cincinnati kept the Gophers from getting another shot as the final seconds expired.

"We had chances to cash in, we had chances to put the game away," Tarver said. "But you've got to give it to Cincinnati. They took those mistakes we made and turned them into opportunities for them. That's why they came out on top."

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