Mick Cronin confronts JP Macura following Cincinnati’s loss to Xavier

Mick Cronin and Xavier’s JP Macura got into after the Crosstown Shootout.

The Crosstown Showdown may have finally gotten to Cincinnati Bearcats head coach Mick Cronin this afternoon. Shortly after the contest, an 89-76 win for the Xavier Musketeers, Cronin attempted to confront Xavier guard JP Macura following the handshake line:

At his postgame press conference, Cronin explained his perspective of the situation without actually making reference to Macura by name.

“I’ve never had a kid tell me to F off three times before,” Cronin said. “During the game, and after the game. You know who it was. Same guy it is every game. Fifteen years as a head coach. Five with [Bob Huggins], two with [Rick Pitino]. Never seen anything like it.”

Cronin went on to say Macura wouldn’t be allowed to play for him if he was on his team, “If he was playing for me, he wouldn’t play. Wouldn’t play for me.”

Cronin’s comments were obviously relayed to Xavier head coach Chris Mack because by the time Mack took the podium, he was ready to issue a response.

“I know one thing: The narrative is not going to be J.P. Macura and Mick Cronin,” the head coach said. “Because there are two sides to the story. There’s a reason their coach was issued a technical in that game. I know that reason because the official told me what happened. So, I’m not going to have the narrative be anything other than us playing better than Cincinnati and beating Cincinnati.”

CBS Sports reports that during the contest Cronin was “profane” with Macura and the Bearcats head coach opted not to interact with the Xavier guard in the handshake line prompting a response.

This doesn’t appear to be the first player-coach confrontation as a result of the perennially heated Shootout. Mack made reference to an interaction he had with former Bearcat Lance Stephenson during his postgame presser as well.

Next: What exactly is Rick Pitino up to?

“As far as ‘He wouldn’t ever play on my team,’ I’m going to go back to 2009 and 2010 when I was the head coach and Lance Stephenson in front of me, right in front of me, called me the N-word three times and said ‘F you,'” he said. “After the game, guess what I did? I shook his hand. I shook his hand. That’s it. There is no narrative, there is no narrative. We won. A year ago, we got our ass kicked. Guess what Mack did? Got our ass kicked, shook hands. I’ll answer questions about that, about the game. I’m not answering any questions about he-said she-said when there’s two sides to the story.”

It certainly sounds like we haven’t heard the end of this one.