Cincinnati Coach Mick Cronin Involved in Verbal Spat With Xavier Players
Xavier won the Crosstown Shootout rivalry game by beating in-city rival Cincinnati 89-76 on Friday, and after the game Cincinnati coach Mick Cronin had to be restrained after he took issue with something a Xavier player, apparently J.P Macura, said during the postgame handshake.
In his postgame comments, Cronin said Macura told him to "eff off."
"Yeah, I've never had a kid tell me to 'eff off' three times before, during the game and after the game, Cronin said, per WCPO.com's Sharon Russell. You know who it was. Same guy it always is every game. Fifteen years I've been a head coach, okay. Five years with Huggs, two with Coach Pitino.
Cronin, who was called for a technical during the game, then said he wouldn't play Macura if he was on his team.
"If he was playing for me, he wouldn't play. He wouldn't play for me."
Before Cronin spoke with reporters, Xavier coach Chris Mack gave an opening statement that addressed the verbal spat.
"Hey, before I start off here. The narrative is not going to be J.P. Macura and Mick Cronin," Mack said, per Russell. "It's not going to be the narrative because there are two sides to the story. There are two sides to the story. There was a reason that their coach was issued a technical in the game. There's areason for that. I know that reason because the official told me what happened. So I'm not going to have the narrative be anything other than us playing better than Cincinnati and beating Cincinnati today. Beating them.
As far as 'he would never play on my team,' I'm going to go back to 2009-10when I was the head coach and Lance Stephenson in front of me, right in front of me, called me the 'N' word three times and said 'eff you.' After the game, guess what I did? I shook his hand. That's it. There is no narrative. We won. A year ago, we got our ass kicked. Shook hands. I'll answer questions about that, about the game. I'm not answering any questions about he-said she-said when there's two sides to the story."
It is not the first game between these two rivals that has produced an incident. In 2011, the teams were involved in a bench-clearing scuffle in the fourth quarter that included multiple punches thrown.
