Moments after Xavier's resounding victory over Cincinnati in the Crosstown Shootout on Saturday afternoon, Bearcats coach Mick Cronin exchanged words with Xavier senior J.P. Macura in the handshake line.
Cronin, in a news conference after the 89-76 loss, said a Xavier player told him to "eff off three times."
"You know who it was," Cronin said.
"If he was playing for me, he wouldn't play," he added.
Xavier coach Chris Mack then came into the news conference after Cronin finished and was heated, saying, "There's two sides to the story," and, "There's a reason their coach was issued a technical in the game."
"I'm not going to have the narrative be anything other than us playing better than Cincinnati and us beating Cincinnati today," Mack added.
"J.P.'s my guy," Mack said of Macura. "J.P. will fight for every inch on the basketball court. He's a great kid. I'm not going to let anybody control the narrative on who they think J.P. Macura is."
Mack then referenced an incident from 2009 or 2010 when former Cincinnati guard Lance Stephenson was with the Bearcats.
"Lance Stephenson, right in front of me, called me the N-word three times and said F- you," Mack said. "After the game, guess what I did? I shook his hands. I shook his hands. There is no narrative. There is no narrative. We won."
The Xavier-Cincinnati rivalry has had its share of incidents. The two schools are separated by three miles. In 2011, there was a bench-clearing brawl between the two teams that forced the series to be held at a neutral court in Cincinnati for the next two seasons.