"That Week is Pure Hatred": Insiders Explain the Crosstown Shootout
In between talks about Duke vs North Carolina, Kentucky vs Louisville and Syracuse vs UConn is a rivalry that spews more hate and two schools in a closer proximity than the others. Nestled 2.4 miles away from each other are Xavier and Cincinnati – the best rivalry that seems to get lost and something that’s just fine with those involved. You see, the city of Cincinnati is a unique place. By all measures it’s a ‘big’ city. It’s a top-40 TV marketplace with two professional teams. However, Cincinnati has just 299,000 people residing in the city and sits where Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana all meet. That’s why this is such a unique rivalry.
Cincinnati is essentially high school extended. I’ve experienced this first hand while living in this city. I didn’t grow up here. The majority of my friends here did not grow up in Cincinnati. When you meet someone from Cincinnati the first reaction is to ask what high school they went to. The second reaction is to ask Xavier or Cincinnati, once they realize you can’t discuss high schools with them. It literally defines who you are in this city. Take a look at the coaches currently at both programs. They are from the Cincinnati area. They have ties to each school before becoming the head coach there.
With the game this year being played this Saturday at noon, it’s starting to pop up on a national level. I felt the only way to truly do this rivalry justice is talk to people involved in it. I reached out to former players from both Xavier and Cincinnati as well as Mo Egger – a radio host of the Mo Egger Show here in Cincinnati on ESPN1530. You see, as I mentioned earlier, this rivalry gets glossed over by the casual college basketball fan. Or the only thing they remember is the infamous brawl back in 2011. What they don’t realize is just the pure hatred these programs and the fans have for each other.
Leonard Stokes, a former standout for Cincinnati from 1999-2003 came to play for the Bearcats from New York. He grew up with and was a lifelong friend of former Xavier player Lionel Chalmers. “During that week Lionel’s parents would come down in town and invite us out to eat. I told them absolutely no way” Stokes told me with a laugh. “I refused to talk to Lionel during the week. Now that said once the buzzer went off we were back to being friends, but that week is pure hatred.”
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That’s sort of the outlier in this rivalry. Former Xavier player C.J. Anderson, who grew up in Cincinnati before playing two years at Manhattan and then transferring back home told me the following. “I didn’t like any of those guys except for Deonta Vaughn and Anthony McClain. I’m still friends with those guys to this day but the rest, I have nothing good to say about. My hatred was before, during and after the game and still going.”
Now Anderson is a little unique in the sense that he grew up here and was around the rivalry his entire life. For someone like Cashmere Wright, who played at Cincinnati from 2009-2013 after growing up in Georgia it was an eye opening experience.
“The first time it dawned how big the rivalry was happen my freshman year when we played in Norwood vs that blue team.” Wright said. “Usually we go out for pre-game shoot-around before the game maybe an hour and 15 minutes before the game and nobody is there! But for this game the fans are there before you even walk out. They had signs, chants and seem to know more about me and my teammates than we could have imagined.”
That sums up this rivalry. You may have noticed a key word missing in Wright’s quote. The main word being, oh, you know, Xavier. These schools will go as far as to saying things like that. It’s so petty and so beautiful. Speaking of petty, it may not get pettier than fans during Egger’s show the week of the shootout. Egger recalls this specific memory:
“We do a show every year from the Crosstown Shootout VIP party, and we’re always guaranteed pretty lengthy sit-downs with both coaches, whom I enjoy talking with immensely. The show is at night, and so we’ll replay the interviews on our show the next afternoon for anyone who may have missed it. A few years ago, we aired our Mick Cronin interview which was something like 14 minutes long. An hour later, we aired our Chris Mack interview, which was like 11 minutes long. After Chris’ interview aired, a guy called in to complain that Mick’s interview had lasted a few minutes longer.”
That’s what makes this rivalry so wonderful. It’s pure hatred and year round. This doesn’t stop just during the week or anything like that. Something that Stokes had to learn as a freshman. He was a highly touted recruit and figured the game was a little overhyped. Talking to me over the phone he started laughing
“Man, when Huggs told us we were playing in front of 10,000 people we sort of laughed. You know, me, Kenny Satterfield and DerMarr Johnson were all freshmen together and thought 10,000 people is something we play in front of in high school.” I noticed a change in his voice though leading up to saying “That game at Cincinnati Gardens though was nuts. It was the loudest place I’ve ever played in in my life.”
Former Xavier guard Brad Redford backed up that statement. He told me, “5/3 Arena was one of the two places that just pierced us with boos. You could feel the hatred the moment you stepped into the building. It’s fantastic.”
It’s also one that has been growing to due the success of Xavier over the last 17 year or so. Cincinnati 100% owned this rivalry and the city as they dominated in the 1960s and through Bob Huggins. Due to that people gave Xavier the one name no one wants in a rivalry. They were deemed the little brother by Cincinnati fans. Now it’s worth noting, Xavier is quite literally little. They are the small Jesuit school in Norwood – a suburb of Cincinnati (something UC fans will remind you of time after time) with an enrollment of 6,500. The University of Cincinnati resides in Clifton – a neighborhood of downtown Cincinnati and has an enrollment of 43,691.
Cincinnati currently owns a series record of 50-34 over the Musketeers. However, over the last decade Xavier has won 7 of the 10 games. That’s where the shift is starting to happen. Xavier fans will tell you now that they are in the Big East and Cincinnati has been forced to the middling American Athletic Conference they are in fact the bigger name in the sport right now. Xavier fans will also yell about the recent NCAA Tournament success making 7 Sweet 16s since 2000 (compared to Cincinnati’s 2) and 3 Elite Eights (compared to Cincinnati’s 0). On the flip side, Cincinnati fans will remind Xavier of one glaring omission. Xavier has never made a Final Four.
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Now with all that said, this year we enter the Crosstown Shootout with Final Four expectations for both teams. Both teams enter the Shootout ranked and are expected to be second weekend teams come the NCAA Tournament. Stokes mentioned to me how the playing field has leveled out. Redford told me that from a local perspective it’s still the same hatred, but getting more attention on a national level with Xavier being better. However it was Anderson who may have put it perfectly in an e-mail to me:
“From my perspective it was NEVER a Xavier Super Bowl. With both teams being ranked it makes the game that much more important and also a good chip for March. It’s a Super Bowl for both teams, the Super Bowl for the Champions of Cincinnati!!”
More importantly the rivalry has been able to move on from the brawl in 2011 featuring Kenny Freese and Yancy Gates. That’s that most people agree was the low moment for the rivalry. Did it spark interest in the event? Possibly. But, you don’t want the interest because of the fight. That following week it’s all everyone talked about, especially here locally. Egger said the following about having to host a show that following week:
“The brawl was on Saturday and our first show was on a Monday, so fortunately by the time we had a chance to talk about it, 48 hours had passed and some of the cooler, calmer voices were being heard. I actually really liked that week on the radio, because there were so many things to talk about, from how the fight could’ve been avoided, to what the punishments should’ve been, to the future of the rivalry. We had good discussions about the internal and external conditions that may or may not have led to the brawl, and both athletic directors came on the air to talk about the fight and what had to be done next. We’d have callers that wanted to go back and watch the fight on YouTube for like the 87th time so they could point the finger at the other team, but for the most part the caller input was really, really good. The only thing I didn’t like was that it took a fight to get people to want to talk about college basketball.”
Now the rivalry is back to pure hatred. Pure disgust for seeing a person you know in either red and black or blue and white depending on who you cheer for. Even more than that people are talking about it because there are national implications at stake. However, it’s still about owning the city. Or as Wright told me “It was a constant battle for the city that right to say we run the city! Whether that’s summer league,open gym or Crosstown Shootout. We wanted to show how superior we were vs That Team In Norwood.”
See it doesn’t matter if you’re a former player, a radio host or just a fan. This rivalry is one for a lifetime. It sticks with you and it’s the one game every year you circle no matter how good or bad your squad is. I’ll have my breakdown of this specific game on Saturday morning, but if you wanted to take a guess at how the five guys in this story predicted the game you won’t be surprised. Wright and Stokes picked Cincinnati, Redford and Anderson picked Xavier. Egger originally picked Cincinnati but now thinks it’s a Xavier win.
Either way make sure you tune in on Saturday.