Note: Article was written before 1/28/2020 game against SMU
I can’t remember a more up and down rocky start to a season for a player as decorated, and with as high expectations as Jarron Cumberland came into this season with. Just to recap, he was the American player of the year last season and picked to be the American Athletic Conference Player of the Year this season as well as one multiple watchlists for National Player of the Year. The guy who recruited him and coached him for three years bolted, he had multiple injuries that didn’t let him get up to full speed in the new coaches system until just recently, he’s been benched for a game, had to come out of others due to injury, and oh yeah he heaved a half court shot with 4.6 seconds left in a tie-game that led to a brutal loss. All of these things happened while fans wondered everything from “why didn’t he just leave in the off-season?” “does Brannen secretly have a problem with him?” “what happened to this guy?” That last question was the biggest talking point amongst fans for the better part of two months this season and I think looking back on it all, it had a fairly simple answer. He’s a 22 year old kid who had unlucky breaks with injuries and a completely new offensive and defensive system to learn on the fly, all while being behind on offseason workouts and conditioning and asked to lead a program that no longer wants to settle for just making a tournament, but needs to start making tournament runs. That’s enough to derail a lot of players entire seasons, but Cumberland isn’t a lot of guys.
As of writing this, Cumberland has now been named to the AAC Weekly Honor Roll for the second consecutive week and has been crucial in the Bearcats sitting in 3rd place in the AAC with a big time slate of games upcoming. The resurgence of Cincinnati’s best player (and top 5 player of the last 10+ years) it has been so fun to watch. In November and December Cumberland played in a total of 10 games, he averaged 13.3 points a game and 2.9 assists, in two of those games alone he recorded 63 points and six assists so removing those two outliers it would mean from the start of the season until New Year’s Day Jarron Cumberland averaged 9.0 points and 2.3 assists a game, decent numbers depending on who the player is, but certainly not Jarron Cumberland numbers.
