Tulsa World: Clawing to credibility

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Clawing to credibility
Cincinnati is no longer considered just a basketball school.

Cincinnati quarterback Dustin Grutza threw for 296 yards and three scores in the Bearcats' win over Eastern Kentucky on Saturday. Al Behrman/Associated Press

By GUERIN EMIG World Sports Writer
Published: 9/2/2008 2:07 AM
Last Modified: 9/2/2008 2:55 AM

Cincinnati is no longer considered just a basketball school.

NORMAN — Cincinnati, cradle to Oscar Robertson and Bob Huggins, seems a basketball school. Perhaps that's why coach Brian Kelly says his football team's trip to Oklahoma Saturday is like a hoops journey to Duke.

It does beg a question: Why are the Bearcats stepping up into that type of gridiron class in the first place?

"It's critical for our program in terms of where we want to go," Kelly said. "This is a huge measuring stick for our football team, relative to where we stand in progression toward a Big East championship."

So Bob Stoops isn't the only coach in Saturday's game who loves the word "championship." Maybe this isn't such a giant step up for Cincinnati, coming off its first 10-win season since 1951, after all.

"They're going to be fine," said Jim Leavitt, whose South Florida Bulls fell to the Bearcats 38-33 last year. "You've got two awfully good football teams playing, both of them well-coached. It's going to be a heck of a ballgame."

The oddsmakers may not be sure — they've made Cincinnati a 3-touchdown underdog — but Sooner coaches have bought in.

"I'd be willing to get you half to 70 percent of their team visited Big Ten schools and decided to go to Cincinnati because of the opportunity (to play), style of offense or defense, or proximity to their family," said OU offensive coordinator Kevin Wilson, familiar with the Bearcats' program from his nine years as an

assistant at Miami (Ohio). "The majority of that team could have played in the Big Ten and chose not to They have players."

Defensive backs DeAngelo Smith and Mike Mickens, for instance, combined to make 14 interceptions last year, the top pass-pilfering duo in the nation. Defensive tackle Terrill Byrd was a second-team All-American.

On offense, third-year starting quarterback Dustin Grutza makes the Bearcats' no-huddle hum with the help of wide receivers Dominick Goodman and Marcus Barnett.

"They're terrific," OU defensive coordinator Brent Venables said. "We feel like their skill will rival anybody we see this year."

That's despite losing Ben Mauk, the transfer quarterback who threw for 3,121 yards and 31 touchdowns last season. Mauk was officially denied a sixth year of eligibility by the NCAA last week. Grutza, the Bearcats' starter in 2005-06, has worked since last spring under the assumption Mauk would not return. It showed last Thursday when he went 21-of-28 for 296 yards and three scores in a 40-7 season-opening victory over Eastern Kentucky.

So much for the idea that Mauk's case, which dragged all the way into Cincinnati's game day last week, would be a distraction.

Now the Bearcats must digest playing on Owen Field, and the perception that theirs is a basketball school playing a football power.

"We are really excited about going and playing in that environment," Kelly said. "It's what college football is all about. We want to be in these kinds of games and that's why we decided we wanted to play Oklahoma...

"Certainly we can't go to Norman, Oklahoma, and lay an egg, and not play to the level we're capable of. I don't think we will."

Guerin Emig 581-8355
guerin.emig@tulsaworld.com By GUERIN EMIG World Sports Writer

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