Steve Logan Earned It
The issue of the Cincinnati Bearcats having the bar set way too high to retire a basketball player’s number has reemerged in the past couple of days on twitter. I’ve heard a lot of debate about this topic the last couple of years and have heard both good and bad ideas surrounding the subject. I jumped at the opportunity to ask UC Athletic Director Mike Bohn about it a while back at an alumni dinner before a game. He said something like “it’s an issue that we’re kicking around some ideas on…why who do you think should have their number retired?” Now of course I was asking him that question because I had a specific player in mind who I thought should have his number retired but I was a little surprised that Bohn shot that right back to me. I said back to him ” #22 for the great Steve Logan.”
Not having 22 hanging in the rafters is a huge mystery to me. Now if you don’t remember Logan or not old enough to have witnessed him play let me fill you in. Logan was the epitome of a Bearcat. A hard-nosed, scoring guard that could lock a player down or break their ankle as soon as look at him. One former player that I met at a book signing called Logan “pound for pound best player we’ve had at Cincinnati.” That’s pretty high regard considering the former player who said it was part of the ’92 team and spent a considerable amount of time in the NBA. Logan is also already an inductee to the University of Cincinnati Athletic Hall of Fame.
Let’s look at the numbers.
He won the Conference-USA Player of the year twice! His senior year he averaged 22pts, shot 87% from the line, and almost 6 assists. Those are conference leading numbers for Logan who the roster had listed at 6′ and 200 lbs. and if you look at him in the highlights below, 6′ was probably a little generous.
The guy was a winner. He was a sophomore the year K-Mart broke his leg but picked up right where he had left off. His senior year the Bearcats went 31-4 and 14-2 in C-USA and lead the team that had Final Four written all over it. They were a 1 seed in the tournament that year and all looked great until UCLA knocked them out (sounds recently familiar).
Logan was drafted #1 in the second round to the Warriors but never played a game. I’d love to hear what happened with that but now Logan runs a youth basketball program in Cleveland and if I’m not mistaken has a son in high school who would look awfully good in red and black if he measures up to what his dad did.
I don’t have an a good answer to Cincinnati’s number retirement problem. Some have suggested a two tier system somewhat like North Carolina has which is fine as long as we #hang22intheshoe.