On the court, the Bearcats moved to a smaller lineup and ran off seven consecutive victories, six without Gates. When he returned, Gates told his teammates: “This is your team. You did well without me. My job right now is to try and fit in with you all.”
“That told me a lot,” Wright said. “We all had our moments when we had to grow up as people. For him, to come in there and say that, it meant so much to the team. It showed so much character. It got everyone’s respect quickly.
“Plus, it was nice to have him back.”
FIRST OF MANY
Kilpatrick had many memorable showdowns with Connecticut guard Shabazz Napier. This was one of the classics.
Connecticut was ranked 13th in the country when it played host to the 14-4 Bearcats on January 18, 2012.
Napier scored a then-career-high 27 points, including a long-range 3-pointer that tied the game with 9.5 seconds left. But it was Kilpatrick who pulled up from the top of the 3-point line and hit the game-winning shot with 2.5 seconds to play.
“All I remember is [Napier] hitting the 3 and I’m thinking to myself when the ball is rolling that Coach is going to call a timeout,” Kilpatrick said. “Then they threw the ball to me. I was a sophomore. I thought they were going to go to Cashmere.
“I didn’t want to go into overtime. I really wanted to get this thing over with once they threw the ball to me. I was running down the court thinking that if Coach doesn’t call a timeout, I have to figure something out. Once I got past half court and he didn’t call a timeout, I saw them come down to try and strip the ball from me. I just pulled up at the 3 and hit the shot.”
UC won 70-67. Kilpatrick said it was the first game-winner of his career.
“That’s when everything started,” he said. “Honestly, I think it opened up a lot of eyes. People didn’t know who I was. I was just somebody playing the role that coach asked me to play. But that shot really started everything. It was definitely a confidence booster. That helped me get to where I am now.
“If you look at when I was a senior, I knew what to do in that position. I wasn’t nervous. I wasn’t scared. With 10 seconds left, I was really comfortable having the ball in my hands.”
‘A MOMENT THAT WILL FOREVER STICK WITH ME’
Wright remembers that he was having a horrible game. He was 3-of-8 shooting from the field and had missed both his 3-point attempts. He had four turnovers and only one assist.
UC, ranked No. 17, was playing Alabama at home on national television (ESPN) on December 1, 2012.
With the game tied and just six seconds remaining, the Bearcats called a timeout. The play called for Wright to look for Kilpatrick and if he wasn’t open to make a play.
Titus Rubles inbounded the ball to Wright, who dribbled straight up the middle of the court. As he neared the 3-point arc, he went left and shot a step-back fade-away jumper over Alabama’s 7-foot center Moussa Gueye. Wright fell on his back just about off the court and never saw the ball go in the basket at the buzzer. But he knew from the reaction of the crowd and his teammates what happened. “I’m looking at Sean’s man, who is face-guarding him,” Wright said. “By the time I pass half court, I realize that I’ve got to take the shot. All I thought was: How am I going to get separation from [Gueye] to get this shot off? My preference was going left. As long as I could get to my left hand, I felt comfortable with whatever shot I was going to take.
“I could hear in my mind my father telling me, ‘Shoot the ball with arc. Shoot the ball with arc.’ It was like a rainbow shot to get over his hand. Before I could hit the ground, SK was jumping on me so I realized I hit the shot. I never saw it go in. All I heard was the crowd and then SK jumped on me. That was a moment that will forever stick with me. To this day I even watch it on YouTube and try to figure out how it happened.”
SK CARRIES THE LOAD
UC started the 2012-13 season 12-0, then went 3-3 over its next six games. Next up was 25th-ranked Marquette, riding a six-game winning streak, at Fifth Third Arena.
Wright, the point guard and the team’s second-leading scorer behind Kilpatrick, had sprained his knee in the previous game, a victory at DePaul four days earlier. Now Kilpatrick was going to be called upon to play some point guard, as well as shooting guard.
“I knew it was going to be tough,” Kilpatrick said. “I was going to have to carry the load.”
Kilpatrick came in having made only 12 of his previous 40 attempts from 3-point range. And two of his first four shots against Marquette missed badly.
But then he got hot, scoring 25 of UC’s first 50 points. However, it was most important how he finished. With 4.3 seconds left in overtime, Kilpatrick made a driving layup from the left side over 6-foot-11 Chris Otule to give UC a 71-69 victory.
Marquette’s Junior Cadougan missed a runner off the glass at the buzzer.
Kilpatrick’s shot capped a career-high 36-point outing.
“I remember that Coach didn’t call timeout again,” Kilpatrick said. “I was just dribbling up the court. I saw the clock winding down. I made a left-hand layup to make us win the game. That was really special to me. I remember Fifth Third Arena was so loud; it felt like the whole floor was shaking after I made that bucket.”
PLAYING WITH PAIN
Wright was pretty much used to dealing with injuries throughout his UC career, especially his knees. He missed his freshman season with a torn ACL in his left knee. He severely sprained his right knee midway through his senior season. And then there was his shoulder.
Wright injured his left shoulder during practice in his junior season in a collision with JaQuon Parker. After that, the shoulder kind of popped in and out of place maybe seven or eight times. “I kind of knew how to put it back in and keep going,” Wright said.
On February 2, 2013, during his senior season, No. 24 UC played at Seton Hall, which was pressing the Bearcats late in the game. Wright kind of got pushed into the scorer’s table and his shoulder came out of place.
Cronin looked at him and saw it.
“He knew I was tough and I could take pain, but I don’t think he realized how much,” Wright said. “Before he turned around and looked at the ball, I pushed it back in place and ran back on the floor. He was just looking at me like, ‘Wow, OK.’ Nobody knows that but me, him and the team. I think I shocked him.
“One thing I told my team: No matter what happens, how hurt I am, we’re going to make the NCAA Tournament, even if I am out there in a wheelchair. That was my mind-set.”
Wright finished his career having played the most games in UC history (139). He also was the team’s career leader in steals with 198. To that point, no Bearcat ever had tallied more than 1,300 points, 475 assists, and 175 steals.
Oh, and he ended up having surgery on his shoulder after his final season.
“Considering that I was never actually fully healthy, it was a marvelous career,” Wright said. “I don’t think the Cincinnati fans were ever able to see me play 100 percent unless you saw the summer league when I first got there.
“That’s what makes everything feel good to me. I was basically playing with one arm my senior year. Even Cronin said it’s kind of odd to see you playing with one arm and get the steals record.”
RIVALS TO THE SOUTH
Over the years, many Cincinnati-Louisville games have been special. For starters, the schools have been rivals through a series of leagues: Metro, Great Midwest, Conference USA, Big East, and the American Athletic Conference.
It was especially intense when Bob Huggins coached against Denny Crum and then Rick Pitino. And then came Pitino versus Cronin, who was Pitino’s associate head coach from 2001-03.
When the teams played in Louisville on January 30, 2014, Louisville was ranked No. 12 and the Bearcats No. 13. Louisville had one of the top players in the country in Russ Smith. UC had one of the top players in the country in Kilpatrick.
This was another classic. Cincinnati surrendered a 17-point lead, only to come back from a three-point deficit in the
final two minutes to beat the Cardinals 69-66. Kilpatrick made 6 of 6 free throws at the end and finished with 28 points. He went 11-of-11 from the foul line.
Cronin said the arena was “louder than a NASCAR event” in the second half.
“SK just said, ‘You’re not winning,’ and he just went and got baskets,” Cronin said.
“They didn’t leave him open and he still shot it in. He went from a guy who couldn’t handle the ball as a young player to someone who had the ball at half court against the best, quickest, defensive guy in the country in Russ Smith and he’s making dribble crossover moves and slicing by Smith and through two other guys for a layup. I’m standing over there thinking, you’ve got to be kidding me. This guy couldn’t dribble through cones without losing the ball four years ago.”
Former UC assistant coach Tony Stubblefield, who had helped recruit Kilpatrick, called Cronin that night from Oregon, where he was an assistant coach. “I was watching the game,” he told Cronin. “It’s unbelievable how good he is.”
WHATEVER IT TAKES
Kilpatrick’s development is not so unbelievable, as Stubblefield put it, when you consider his work ethic.
Cronin tells the story of Kilpatrick going through individual workouts during the summer of 2013 with UC assistant coaches Larry Davis and Darren Savino. They were having him dribble through cones, and Kilpatrick was struggling and kept losing the ball. “You can’t dribble with your left hand,” the coaches were yelling at him. “You’re not working hard enough.”
The coaching staff flew out that night to go recruiting. The next morning, they were all getting coffee when they received a text message from Kilpatrick.
“It’s a YouTube video clip, and he is in the practice gym at 2 in the morning,” Cronin said. “He’s got the cones out, he’s doing the drill and he’s yelling at us the whole time he’s doing it: ‘You said I couldn’t do it!’ Then he’d go through the cones with his left hand.
“Coaches like to tell stories about guys working hard. They’re not ‘stories’ with this guy. They’re true. There are many of those stories.”
Cronin continues:
“Last summer [2013], I’m on the road. It’s Friday night. I’m eating with a friend of mine. It’s 11:45 p.m. and I get a text message. It’s SK. He sends me a picture. It’s the whole team and they’re in the gym. You can tell they’ve all been playing because they’re all sweating. And the caption is: Nobody else is playing like the Bearcats tonight. That’s a Friday night in July. That’s when you know as a coach you’re going to have a good year.”
AND IT WAS
Cronin’s 2013-14 team went 27-7 and shared the American Athletic Conference championship with a 15-3 record.
Without question, the season belonged to Kilpatrick. He was the team’s leader, top scorer, big-shot maker, clutch performer. You name it, Kilpatrick did it.
The night before UC’s final home game of the season, March 6, 2014, against Memphis, Kilpatrick and Justin Jackson—long-time roommates on the road—stayed up talking until about 2 a.m. in their hotel room. They reminisced about games past and wondered how the program would look after they left.
Mostly, though, they talked about how hard they planned to play against Memphis and how they wanted the home fans to remember them.
“We’re going to go out the way we want to go out,” they told each other. “We’ve got to leave everything on that court. We’ve got to get to the point where you can’t breathe; where you’ll crawl on the floor to get to where you want to go.”
“I really wanted to make that night special, not only for me, but for the fans as well,” Kilpatrick said.
As soon as Jackson was announced to the crowd before the game, he started crying. Then tears started rolling down Kilpatrick’s face. Once he was announced, the ovation was so loud and long that it “sent chills” through Kilpatrick.
Kilpatrick said that Cronin hugged him and said, “I love you, man, and I appreciate everything you’ve done for me and this program. If you need anything, and I mean anything, I’m always here for you.”
“That made me cry,” Kilpatrick said. “He gave me the chance to come to the University of Cincinnati and make things work. Once I got here, when I told him what my dream was, he said it’s going to be a lot of work but it’s not impossible. That’s something I really thought about on Senior Night. I remembered everything he said to me. That caused me to cry the most.”
Then, it was show time. No. 20 Memphis never stood a chance.
The Bearcats raced to an 18-4 lead and went on to a 97-84 victory. Kilpatrick scored 34. Jackson finished with 13 points, nine rebounds, three steals, and three assists. Classmate Titus Rubles had a career night with 24 points and five rebounds.
“Once that ball was thrown up in the air, it was all over,” Kilpatrick said. “We just saw blood. If you were standing in the lane, Justin was dunking on you. If you were trying to guard me, I was crossing you over. Titus had the biggest game of his life. We really put everything we had onto the court.
“It’s a night I will never forget. Honestly, that was the best game of my life. It was the result, how things went, the atmosphere. It was so loud in there. You couldn’t even hear Coach call any plays because it was so loud.”
SPECIAL POSTGAME
When Kilpatrick emerged from the locker room after UC’s victory, his friend Ricardo Grant told him that a fan was waiting to meet him and wanted his shoes. “You know these are my favorite sneakers,” Kilpatrick said. “SK, you’ve got to do it,” Grant said.
Kilpatrick met the fan. It was a boy in a wheelchair.
“I ran back in the locker room, signed those sneakers, and gave them to him,” Kilpatrick said. “I took a picture with him. It made my day.
“I always said to myself that I would never, ever make a kid feel that I was too stuck up or too good to sit down and try to talk for 10 or 15 minutes. I always wanted to leave a mark on younger kids. I want to be somebody who is recognized for his off-the-court ability, as well as on the court.”
CONSIDER IT DONE
As good of a player as Kilpatrick was at UC, he was equally—if not more so—appreciated because of the way he handled himself publicly, in the media, in games, and the way he represented the program and the university.
For five years he stayed out of trouble. He said he chose the gym over parties. He mostly hung out with teammates. “I understood really early in my life what my mom and dad expected from me,” he said. “If I did get in trouble, that would be very disappointing to them.”
Kilpatrick earned his degree and was selected to join Sigma Sigma, a UC men’s honorary fraternity founded in 1898 that emphasizes leadership and loyalty to the University of Cincinnati.
“It’s the top honorary on campus,” Kilpatrick said. “Do you know how hard it is to get in Sigma Sigma? There are not a lot of people who get in.
“I never had heard about it until Leonard Stokes told me about it. Then I did my homework on it. I took it with open arms. I am able to be a part of this university forever now and really lay my mark down knowing that my name will forever be paved on this campus.”
When Cronin talks about Kilpatrick, it’s clear he meant more to the program than all the points he scored and victories he participated in.
“This is what I’m most proud of: Not the wins, but when you think of a Cincinnati basketball player right now, what comes to your mind?” Cronin said. “You think of Sean Kilpatrick. He’s a good guy. That benefits all our former players. It helps them all get better jobs, whether regular jobs or in basketball. And it’s great for our university.”
ICING ON THE CAKE
On March 31, 2014, Kilpatrick was named first-team All-America by the Associated Press. It was the culmination of a memorable senior season and five years at the University of Cincinnati.
Kilpatrick left as the school’s No. 2 all-time scorer with 2,145 points and is the only player other than Oscar Robertson to amass 2,000 points. He tied Vaughn
for most 3-pointers made in school history (313) and set school records for games played (140) and career minutes (4,315).
He played in four NCAA Tournaments. He led the American Athletic Conference in scoring with a 20.6 ppg scoring average. And he graduated with a degree in criminal justice.
“It went so fast,” Kilpatrick said. “I had a helluva life here. If the NBA wasn’t in existence, I would never want to leave college. When I write things on Twitter and Instagram and I hashtag #thehottestcollegeinamerica, that’s something that I really mean.
“This college took me to a whole ’nother level. It made me a man. It made me who I am today. There are a lot of guys in the NBA who went to Cincinnati who never come back. I will try to come back every year for a game. I know that may be impossible, but you better believe I will try. This is who I am. I bleed Cincinnati red.”
Tales from the Cincinnati Bearcats Locker Room Page 24