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The Elite Eight is supposed to have marquee matchups and each of the pairings of the All-Time Favorite Cincinnati Bearcat Basketball Player Tournament were certainly that on paper. However, in execution, Oscar Roberton, Nick Van Exel and Kenyon Martin all won pretty easily.
However, getting our fourth finalist provided a much more hotly contested affair. After seven days of voting, No. 1 seed Sean Kilpatrick and No. 2 seed Steve Logan each had 50 percent of the vote. That meant a tie breaker was in order and what better way to break a tie than to open the voting up to a good old fashioned Twitter poll. Well, the results are in and the winner is...
Who is your favorite Bearcat of all-time between the two? Voting is open for the next two hours.
— Down the Drive (@downthedrive) July 7, 2017
No. 1 Sean Kilpatrick defeats No. 2 Steve Logan
That’s right. The second highest scoring player in Cincinnati Bearcats history is moving on to the Final Four. Kilpatrick will move on to face Kenyon Martin, who won the Bob Huggins region. While Martin was the best player of the Huggins era, Kilpatrick is the best of the Mick Cronin era, which is the region he will represent.
The 6’4 shooting guard from Yonkers, New York had an exceptional college career, which he capped with an All-American selection as a senior. Some might forget that because it was the same year Shabazz Napier won the national title and because Kilpatrick was not selected in the NBA Draft, but now that he’s cashing checks from the Brooklyn Nets, it looks like Kilpatrick has just proved more people wrong. Bearcats fans were never among that group.
Logan nearly broke through to become the third Huggins pupil to make the Final Four of this tourney but got bested by social media, something that wasn’t even around when he was playing. Logan sits just one spot behind Kilpatrick on the all-time UC scoring list and was a nifty distributor as well. He was an All-American like Kilpatrick, but I suppose a bit of recency bias may have carried the day for Kilpatrick.
Either way, the Final Four is now set. Make sure you vote in this matchup and the other one between Robertson and Van Exel and we’ll see you next week to set a title round.