No. 5 Cincy Pounds Louisville

January 22, 1999 / 12:45 AM EST / AP

A chance for Louisville to move back among the nation's elite basketball programs turned into an embarrassment.

Cincinnati's Pete Mickeal had a double-double and the fifth-ranked Bearcats outrebounded the 24th-ranked Cardinals 44-19 on the way to an 81-55 victory Thursday night.

"They literally dominated us physically out there," Louisville coach Denny Crum said. "For whatever reason, they did everything and anything they wanted to do. It didn't matter who they had in the game.

"They just wanted the ball and they went and got it," Crum said.

Led by Mickeal's 18 points and 10 rebounds, the Bearcats (17-1, 5-1 Conference USA) controlled all facets of the game, shooting 29-of-50 from the field. With 14 offensive rebounds to Louisville's seven, Cincinnati scored 20 second-chance points, while the Bearcats' 29-9 edge on the defensive boards gave Louisville (10-4, 5-1) few second looks.

Only three garbage-time rebounds kept Louisville from having more turnovers (17) than boards.

Though the Conference USA standings will show the Bearcats and Cardinals tied atop the league's American Division, Thursday night's game was not a matchup of equals. Cincinnati's size and physical play repeatedly denied the Cardinals an inside route to the basket, forcing them to take contested shots from the perimeter. Louisville ended up shooting 21-of-57.

"I thought Kenyon (Martin) and (Jermaine) Tate inside really did a nice job for us," Cincinnati coach Bob Huggins said. "Every time they did get it close, those two guys did a nice job of changing shots and making it difficult."

The Cardinals suffered through a bleak 1998, in which they finished with only the second losing record (12-20) in Crum's tenure and then were hit with NCAA sanctions that included a ban on postseason play this year.

With a new year came new hope, and last week school officials argued their appeal of the postseason ban before the NCAA. This week, the Cardinals entered the Top 25 for the first time since early in the 1997-98 season.

Thursday night's game, however, put a stop to the optimism. Crum wondered whether his team was intimidated by Cincinnati.

"I don't know if they were scared or what, but they didn't follow our rebounding rule, which is that you assume every shot is going to be missed and go get it," he said. "We weren't even pretending to rebound."

Marques Maybin led Louisville with 19 points and Eric Johnson had 13. Cincinnati's Melvin Levett had 18 points, while Ryan Fletcher and Tate each added 11. Tate had nine rebounds.

Huggins said Cincinnati, which gave up three early baskets in transition, made a conscious effort to shut down that part of Louisville's game.

"They are such a great transition team, we really wanted to work the clock and make them play a little bit of defense and maybe attack the goal a little bit more to stop their tranition game," he said.

Down 9-8, Cincinnati took control with an 8-0 run that included two jumpers by Kenyon Martin and consecutive second-chance baskets by Tate.

Moments later, Cincinnati was off on another run, this one 15-5, and by halftime it was 42-26, with the Bearcats outrebounding the Cardinals 25-9. Louisville turned the ball over nine times in the half, leading to 12 Cincinnati points.

In the second half, two 3-pointers by Eric Johnson helped the Cardinals close the gap to 49-40 with 13:28 remaining. But another big Cincinnati run put it away, as Mickeal scored 10 points in an 18-4 run that gave Cincinnati a 67-44 lead.