CINCINNATI — The University of Cincinnati's success on the football field hasn't deterred its students from other priorities – like the Bearcats' rivalry with Xavier University.
While UC students were guarding the Oscar Robertson statue outside Fifth-Third Arena on Wednesday night, Xavier's D'Artagnan statue was hit with eggs and slices of cheese.
The incident comes days before UC plays at Xavier in the Crosstown Shootout. The game is Saturday at 8:30 p.m. on FS`1.
In what has become a tradition, UC students were deployed around the Oscar Robertson statue this week in defense of potential Xavier pranksters.
"The week before the Crosstown Shootout, Xavier fans will try to put a (Xavier) jersey on Oscar," Cam Kirzner, an Operations Mangement major, said. "So what we do is camp out all night throughout the week. We run games and activities for students, do giveaways and make sure that Xavier doesn't mess with Oscar."
D'Artagnan was picked as Xavier's mascot in 1925, when the college took the nickname the Musketeers from the classic Alexandre Dumas novel "The Three Musketeers." A statue of D'Artagnan was first placed on campus in 1968. It was replaced with a newer statue in 2000, when Xavier's Cintas Center opened.
The Robertson statue honors the Hall of Fame guard who played with the Bearcats and starred in the NBA with the Cincinnati Royals and the Milwaukee Bucks. He was the first NBA player to average a triple-double in a season and the only player until 2017, when Russell Westbrook duplicated the feat. Robertson led the Bearcats to two Final Fours and won a gold medal with the 1960 Olympic team.
Correction: The last name of Cam Kirzner was misspelled in this article. It has been corrected.
