Throwback Thursday: Farewell to the Cincinnati Gardens

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When it opened up in 1949, the Cincinnati Gardens was modeled after Toronto’s fabled Maple Leaf Gardens. The first major tenant was a minor league hockey team, namely the Cincinnati Mohawks of the American Hockey League and later the International Hockey League. They would win multiple Turner Cups as champs of the IHL, and another future team (the Cincinnati Swords) would also win a Calder Cup as part of the American Hockey League.

As for basketball, the first major tenant for the Gardens would be the Cincinnati Royals of the NBA. They played in the Gardens for 15 years after relocating from Rochester in 1957. Although they never won any NBA titles, they were a frequent contender in the Eastern Conference thanks to players like Jack Twyman, Oscar Robertson and Jerry Lucas. One sign that the NBA was not yet a mainstream pro league was that they had to move a playoff series against the Boston Celtics out of the Gardens in favor of a circus one year; the games were subsequently moved to Xavier’s ancient Schmidt Fieldhouse. After the 1971-72 season, dwindling attendance helped spur another relocation as the Cincinnati Royals would become the Kansas City Kings (now the Sacramento Kings).

When it comes to college basketball, the Cincinnati Bearcats would occasionally play games in the Cincinnati Gardens, although the Armory Fieldhouse (built in 1954) was their primary home during this time. Once Riverfront Coliseum was built in the mid-1970s, it offered a new home for the Bearcats along with the World Hockey League’s Cincinnati Stingers. This in turn would eventually provide a permanent home in the Gardens for the Xavier Musketeers. Xavier was a program that had an NIT title in 1958 to their credit (along with a single NCAA appearance in 1961), but they had a program that was abysmally bad in the 1960s and 1970s on a level that would have merited occasional Centenary consideration had HoopsHD existed at this time. Even that may not have been fair to Centenary at that time – their program was actually respectable at this time thanks to a star player named Robert Parish!

But Bob Staak was slowly building a solid program at Xavier that finally found a home in the newly formed Midwestern City Conference in the early 1980s. As attendance began to rise, Schmidt Fieldhouse became inadequate for a growing Xavier fanbase and they would move to the Cincinnati Gardens beginning with the 1983-84 season. And they were rewarded – the 1984 season featured a trip to the NIT that included wins at home against Nebraska and Ohio State. Following a season in which Staak would move on from Xavier to Wake Forest, Pete Gillen took over in 1985-86 and continued to lay a foundation where Xavier would make the NCAA Tournament 7 times in his 9 seasons. Skip Prosser would also follow in his footsteps beginning with the 1994-95 season. They would go undefeated in the MCC (now the Horizon League) regular season in 1994-95 and would get an at-large NCAA Tournament bid despite an upset loss to Wright State in the MCC conference tournament that year.

Another step forward was taken for Xavier’s program in the 1995-96 season. This was their first season in the Atlantic 10, and also meant that instead of hosting programs like Evansville, Detroit and Loyola-Chicago on an annual basis, they would now be playing host to Massachusetts (a national power under John Calipari), Temple, and another emerging program in George Washington annually. It was an overtime loss to UMass on national TV that served notice that Xavier had a team of future stars on their roster. By the end of Xavier’s tenure at the Gardens following the 1999-2000 season, they had accumulated a very impressive 215-25 record at home (.896 winning percentage).

As electric as the UMass game was, few games could ever compare to the Crosstown Shootout. It was at its peak in the early 1990s when Gillen was in his prime at Xavier and Bob Huggins had just taken over a program at Cincinnati that went through its own down cycle in the 1980s. The teams would exchange Shootout victories from 1990 through 1998 – this included a very contentious game in 1994 where Brian Grant would hit a game-tying shot in regulation to force overtime. After Xavier won in overtime, Gillen and Huggins had a shouting match after the game as opposed to the usual handshake line. Things simmered down a bit after Gillen moved on to Providence, but it was hardly the last great moment in the Gardens. That was reserved for the 1999-2000 season – it was the second time in 4 seasons where Xavier would defeat a Cincinnati team ranked #1 at the time.

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. After Xavier moved to the Cintas Center on campus for the 2000-01 season, the AHL’s Cincinnati Mighty Ducks remained as a tenant until the 2004-05 season. Once they left town, the Gardens would play host to fringe pro hockey, high school hockey, occasional pro wrestling events and roller derby. As of July 21, 2016, the Gardens was sold to the Greater Cincinnati Development Authority. Memorabilia from the Gardens has already been sold through local estate sales and there are now plans in the works to sell the seats as well through similar channels.

As for the end of the 1999 Crosstown Shootout, click here to see the ending in all its glory.

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