The Bearcats beat South Florida Tuesday night 82-74 for their third conference win in the last six days. Let that sink in for however long you need to. Three wins in six days in conference play is extremely impressive and especially when you’re the defending outright conference regular-season and tournament champions and have a target on your back. For those who are wondering why there have been several consecutive close games lately in conference play, here’s why: every team in the American Athletic Conference is going to give Cincinnati its best shot because they all want what Cincinnati has: a championship. Especially considering Cincinnati is defending two, every team is going to give them its best shot, except for a completely overmatched Tulane team.
Think about where the Bearcats were a week ago today. They were heading into Tulsa on the heels of a really bad loss at East Carolina. I remember listening to Cincy 360 that afternoon with Mo Egger and Tony Pike, and one of them said they weren’t very confident in the Bearcats going into Tulsa and being able to win a very important early conference game. I wasn’t either considering what had happened at ECU and the fact that Tulsa had won their previous 15 home games prior to last week. But what the Bearcats did in winning that game and the way they did it is why I think they can not only be a good team, but potentially a great team.
Great teams don’t let one loss linger. They instantly put it behind them by winning the next game. Similar to how you move on to the next play in the game, the Bearcats put the ECU loss behind them and went into Tulsa and earned a critical win. Cane Broome showed just how valuable he is to this team by scoring all seven of Cincinnati’s points in the 7-1 run in the final minute that pulled them even out of a six-point deficit. They withstood nine Tulsa second half threes and made plays when they had to down the stretch and in overtime. Oh by the way, three starters were battling leading up to and in the game itself.
Which is why the win at home against UConn, which tipped off less than 48 hours after the overtime win at Tulsa, is also a really good win despite Mick Cronin being irate after the game. But UConn is a much-improved team as head coach Dan Hurley has seemingly breathed new life into the program. Yes, Cincinnati gave up 11 threes in that game, but as I wrote in my column, they made defensive stops when they needed to. Again, every AAC team is going to give the Bearcats its best shot. It’s what Cincinnati does when the game is on the line that’s going to determine whether or not they win games. So far they’ve made plays when they’ve needed to. Don’t bring up the ECU game when they didn’t, even though I just brought it up. That’s in the rear-view mirror with these three straight wins.
Remember how I said Mick Cronin was irate after the UConn game? Part of his irateness was on the team’s lack of discipline on defense. Okay, I get it at times it wasn’t good. But maybe he needs to understand that some players were exhausted either from battling the flu during an overtime game less than 48 hours prior to tip-off against UConn or playing extended minutes at Tulsa because three starters were battling the flu. Cronin is very committed to his philosophies as a head coach: defense and rebounding. That’s great, but I think he has to sometimes understand circumstances within the team that may not be controllable can impact performance on the court. The best part about the UConn game was as undisciplined as the Bearcats were at times, they still won. Winning ugly is better than losing pretty, as an old basketball coach of mine used to say.
Cronin also said after the UConn game that he was unhappy with his entire coaching staff. Um, okay, that’s actually kind of funny thinking about that now because Cronin got some poetic justice Tuesday night against South Florida by getting ejected for the first time in his career. Yup, that’s right. Ejected. And of course, he was his same old self in yelling at the players constantly throughout the game as well as the officials prior to getting thrown out.
Here’s what I hope for. I hope this ejection makes Cronin take a step back and realize that he’s coaching a young team that, despite its lack of defensive discipline and execution at times, is scoring a lot of points and winning games. He can preach about defense and rebounding all he wants, but it might take this team time to reach their full potential in both areas. This is a young team defending an outright regular season and conference tournament championship, getting every AAC team’s best shot and they’re winning games. It’s easier for a team to try and get better when they’re winning. Logan Johnson told me Wednesday that this team is confident as long as they put in the work. That’s all I needed to hear.
Tuesday night at the game, I was wondering how we were going to do this every game. Well, I and the rest of you Bearcats fans might as well get used to these close games because there’s going to be a lot of them. In fact, Brent Stover, who was the play-by-play announcer for the UCF-Wichita State game Wednesday night on CBS Sports Network, said there are going to be close games in the AAC this season. And here’s the thing, it’s hard to repeat as conference regular-season or tournament champions. Between the 2016-17 and 2017-18 regular seasons, there were only seven repeat regular-season champions throughout the entire college basketball landscape. Only two of those teams came from Power Five conferences: Arizona (Pac12) and Kansas (Big 12, what a shock! They’ve won 14 in a row!)
So, despite the defensive concerns, the Bearcats are just fine. This young team just won three games in a six-day span, and maybe Mick Cronin will learn something from being ejected Tuesday night. His postgame comments didn’t suggest that, but you never know. As I said, enjoy the journey with this young team. They are very fun to watch.
Let me be Frank and Cut to the Chase 