In case you missed it, the UC men's basketball team takes to the floor Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden.  In the scheme of life, you would assume it's high time they win there.   After a nauseating loss to St. John's earlier in the year and being 0-3 in Big East tournament games, the pendulum ought to be swinging the Bearcat way in New York City.

"Obviously, we need to do that so people quit writing about it," said Mick Cronin about winning in the Big East tournament.  "We (UC) have played three of them.  Andy Kennedy got beat on Gerry McNamara's first of his great runs of last second shots. We've (Cronin's teams) played two. We played one really good game and we lost to the tournament champion when we were completely out manned and the kids played their hearts out. We've played one good game and one bad game."

There's also that lingering stat of being 0-12 in March in the last four seasons.  Blame could be placed in a lot of areas, but it's an unflattering number to have hanging over your head.

"You can say what you want to say and make things sound how they want, but you need to win one,"  reiterated Cronin on Monday.  "I'd like to win more than one.  But, you've got to win one to win two."

For UC, they realistically have to win more than one to have any consideration from the NCAA.  Some say three, others think they best "run the table" in the Big Apple.  They were in a similar situation last year and were denied all postseason invites after an embarrassing first-round loss to DePaul.

"Oh, we played poorly," Cronin recalled.    "I'm glad we don't play the noon game.  That's a tough game to go in there and have the Garden empty pretty much at 12 o'clock Tuesday."

This time, they play at night (around 9) on ESPNU.  They'll face 15-16 Rutgers, whom they beat in early January 65-58 in New Jersey.

"Obviously as a coach, you look at everyone as a dangerous opponent," Cronin said of the Scarlet Knights.  "I think they're 5-5 in their last 10.  I'm glad we don't have to play somebody we played last week. I like the fact that we haven't played in a while.  It's tough to get your guys motivated.  Tournament time you have to take who you draw and make sure you're ready to play."

That means a lot of things.  Like, don't inbound the ball to the other team.   Don't settle on threes if they're not going in.  Show up for the second half.  Now, Cronin has to revitalize a team that is very close from going from contender to pretender.

"Guys are excited about going to play, we're all disappointed to a man about going 16-14,"  said Cronin.  "We know how close we were to winning 20.  We take responsibility for it.  No one's more frustrated than our guys."

Now, it's five games in five days scenario for the Bearcats.   Not impossible, but potentially physically and emotionally draining.   No pressure at all in that, right?

"I like our draw," Cronin said of the tourney.  "I like the fact that we get to play night games.  Nobody wants to play better than those guys do.  What I don't want them to do is press too much, which I think has been an issue.  When the bad breaks started piling up on us, I think the kids started putting pressure on themselves."

If the "yips" and "jitters" go away, we've all seen how the Bearcats can play.  Outside of the disappointing Georgetown loss, it's not like any of the Big East teams have just blown their doors off.

And, the tournament is noted for its drama (six overtimes last year for Syracuse and Connecticut).

"The game is going to be close," Cronin predicted.  "We can't go in there going, 'Oh, Rutgers,' these games are all going to be close.  The tournament's going to be wild.  You can't play with stress.

We can control our effort and our attitude.  We're going to get an A-plus in both of those areas in New York, that's our goal."

Perhaps helping the stress a little, UC AD Mike Thomas recently gave Coach Cronin a "vote of confidence".   The "natives are restless" as some say, but Cronin at least has the backing of his athletic director.

"Mike's always been supportive of me," said Cronin.   "We've been on the same page with how hard this was going to be-we were going to be in it together.  That being said, I need to deliver.  The only thing I'd like to say to people is, just because you hear me say,'We've lost a close game,' trust me, no one wants to deliver more than me.  We're trying to get the program back to the NCAA tournament and back amongst the Top 25."

The latter is part of the problem.  UC fans were conditioned for high expectations in March from 1990-2005.   Then the curious turn of events led to the equivalent of shutting the program down for the year.  With that came no recruiting, combined with negative recruiting.

"As far as recruiting, negative recruiting is never going to go anywhere," said Cronin. "You could win the national championship and people are going to say, 'Well, you won't get in the game for them,'  People that negative recruit-they're serial negative recruiters.  That's how they operate.  You can be the best team in your league and they'll still find a way to negative recruit against you.  'He yells too much, he doesn't play his bench, Pitino plays his bench too much, Boeheim doesn't play his enough,' you can pick on anyone and only see what you want to see. That's part of our game; it's never going to go away."

Having a rough time in the final stretch doesn't help much.   A lot has been made of how UC played in Maui and how they've fallen short since.   Cronin even acknowledged taking a call from ESPN's Sean McDonough who did those games on TV.

"We've been inconsistent all year," said Cronin of his discussion with McDonough.  "I said, 'Sean we shot 38 percent in Maui (actually 39.6), we just rebounded the ball.' We haven't shot the ball well all year.   Our effort has been consistent-offensively we've struggled a little bit.  I think we've been consistently inconsistent."

That possibly was the most accurate statement on Bearcat basketball in some time. By late Tuesday night we should know whether it was Jekyll or Hyde that appeared at Madison Square Garden.