The ‘Crosstown Shootout’ could be on the verge of a golden age

After 15 years of struggling to turn a profit, the Cincinnati Royals NBA franchise packed its bags and moved to Kansas City in 1972. Three years later the franchise would become the Kansas City Kings, and a decade after that it would relocate to Sacramento.

Despite the Bengals and Reds being mainstays in two other of America’s major professional sports leagues, Cincinnati has never even flirted with landing another NBA team. It’s not that the area doesn’t have a passion for roundball; it’s just that it doesn’t have a passion for the professional version of the sport.

In Ohio, just like in its border states of Kentucky and Indiana, college is still king. Areas like Dayton and Columbus have seen their hometown teams enjoy their fair share of success over the years, but the passion for the sport burns the brightest in The Queen City. It’s here where you’re either a Bearcat or a Musketeer, and it’s here where one of college basketball’s fiercest rivalries takes center stage each winter.

”Really, it’s the city that makes it a rivalry,” former Cincinnati standout Nick Van Exel said in 2012. “The players coming into it, like I said, I knew nothing about it. It’s the city. It’s the people who go to the two different schools that really pump this thing up.”

Xavier and Cincinnati met on the hardwood for the first time in 1927, with the Musketeers pulling out a narrow 29-25 victory at Schmidt Field House on the Xavier campus. The schools, which are separated by just 2.7 miles, have met 83 times since, with Cincinnati currently owning a 50-34 all-time series advantage.

The unapologetically local rivalry is attractive to outsiders for a number of reasons, the most obvious being the extreme contrast between the major players.

Cincinnati is a public school with a current enrollment of just under 45,000. Xavier is a Jesuit school with an enrollment of only 6,700. The Bearcats have been a national player for as long as anyone can remember, winning the NCAA tournament in 1961 and 1962 and finishing as its runner-up in 1963.

The Musketeers were largely irrelevant to the rest of the country until the past three decades. They had never made a Sweet 16 before 1990 and had never even won a game in the NCAA tournament before 1987. Cincinnati is still perceived as the bruising bad boy, while Xavier, despite its status as a member of the Big East, still gets painted as something of a lovable little guy.

Combine all these factors, and you have two of the most intriguing hours of the college basketball season every time the Bearcats and Musketeers step on the court together.

“Cincinnati vs. Xavier is off the charts,” former UC head coach Bob Huggins said in 2013. “I mean, it’s off the charts. I think a lot of it is proximity. The whole thing starts two weeks before the game with Xavier people calling WLW. It is non-stop. It’s like you probably shouldn’t play for two weeks, because those other people you are playing really don’t matter. You got husbands who went to Xavier and wives who went to UC and vice versa. It’s crazy.”

The rivalry has produced a number of high-profile clashes, tremendous finishes, and the most notorious in-game fight that college basketball has seen in the last decade. Said fight was so ugly that it briefly resulted in the name of the rivalry being changed from the “Crosstown Shootout” to the “Crosstown Classic,” and for the game itself to go from being played on campus to a neutral location at U.S. Bank Arena.

So why isn’t Cincinnati-Xavier viewed on the same plane as North Carolina-Duke or Louisville-Kentucky? The easiest answer is that those other four programs have all had more success when it comes to making Final Fours and winning national championships.

Cincinnati hasn’t been to a Final Four since 1992, hasn’t played in a regional final since 1996, and has made just one Sweet 16 since 2001. Xavier, though it’s been to the Elite Eight three times since 2004, has now established a reputation for itself as perhaps college basketball’s best program to have never crashed the Final Four.

Those less than flattering facts attached to both programs could be altered in a few short months. Xavier is 6-1 with quality victories over Wisconsin and Baylor and a single loss to 6-0 Arizona State. This Cincinnati team is widely believed to be the best Mick Cronin has fielded. The Bearcats are unbeaten, but untested, with their average margin of victory in seven games sitting at 32.6 ppg.

When the 11th-ranked Bearcats and 21st-ranked Musketeers square off at noon on Saturday, it’ll be the first time in the history of the series that the teams have both been nationally ranked in three consecutive meetings. A year ago, UC broke a three-game losing streak with an 86-78 win in a game that was a far cry from the (sometimes literal) slugfests of years past. Xavier has won 14 of the last 21 meetings, several times as a heavy underdog against Huggins’ powerhouse teams of the late ‘90s and early 2000s.

With Xavier’s emergence and Cincinnati appearing poised to return to the dominance it last knew when Kenyon Martin and Danny Fortson were sporting red and black, the Crosstown Shootout has a real chance to get the national attention it’s been owed for some time. All the other elements have always been there.

“I like to think this is about two basketball programs and teams,” former Xavier coach Sean Miller said in 2006. “This game’s bigger than any one person. It’s bigger than that. What a war. What an amazing game.”