A collective breath was held by every single one of the UC fans either sitting at Allstate Arena or watching on TV last night when Cashmere Wright fell to the floor clutching his knee. We all know the story of Cincinnati’s point guard; blew out his knee his freshman year, was forced to redshirt, and has been battling the soreness and stiffness that follows a major surgery ever since. The first report from the sidelines was that he was only cramping around the knee area and he was only behind held out as a precaution. He certainly was able to return to the bench under his own power. But now it looks like it is being elevated to a “tweak” and Cash will have to undergo an MRI on his knee just to make sure what happened. Hopefully we hear some positive news on him in the next day or so.
But back to the immediate concerns of the actual game, losing Cash seemed like a big blow to the ‘Cats as he was literally the only one giving them any semblance of a scoring threat. Kilpatrick added 18 to the total but many of those came by way of the free throw late in the game (more on his slump next week). Sure Cincinnati was up by 13 at the time Cash went down and chances were high they would be able to sustain the lead without their starting point guard. But DePaul took advantage of a Cincinnati team that didn’t have an answer for his replacement. Mick tried everything he could to find someone who could operate the offense, rotating between Kilpatrick, Parker, and Guyn. DePaul had no trouble with the substitute point guards and whittling the lead to single digits. Eventually the Blue Demons reduced their deficit to 3 but at that point it was too little too late and Cincinnati was able to secure the win at the free throw line.