What went wrong for the Bearcats last night can be fixed in the long run

COLUMBUS, Ohio — It was déjà vu all over again, but not in the Bearcats favor.

For the second consecutive season, the Bearcats dropped their season-opener to the No. 18 Ohio State Buckeyes, 64-56, the exact same score of the season-opener last year between the two teams in the opening game in newly-renovated Fifth Third Arena. What’s more deja vu is that Ohio State did most of their damage in the second half Wednesday just as they did last year against Cincinnati, this time scoring 45 points to the Bearcats 30.

In spite of the loss, there is no shame in losing on the road against the No. 18 team in the country. It’s disappointing, yes. But I’m not at all thinking any differently about this season, because everything that went wrong for the Bearcats last night can be fixed in the long run.

Here are my 12 takeaways from last night’s game:

1. When a team leads by seven on the road against the No. 18 team in the country and lets them back into the game at the start of the second half, ultimately losing the lead to that team, there is a serious price to be paid.

2. That said, two of the Bearcats three returning starters from last year’s team, Jarron Cumberland and Tre Scott, had serious off nights. Cumberland did tie Keith Williams for the team lead in scoring with 13 points, but did it on 4-13 shooting including an uncharacteristic 0-5 mark from three. Cumberland was also a spotty 5-9 from the free-throw line, including two critical misses with the Bearcats trailing 59-53 with just a tick over two minutes remaining. Perhaps even more important down the stretch was the charge called against Cumberland with 1:29 remaining, preventing him of redemption at the free-throw line and allowing the Buckeyes to maintain their six-point lead.

Despite Scott pulling down a team-high 12 rebounds, he only managed to tally three points off six offensive rebounds. What’s worse is he went empty on seven shots from the field. As a junior last year, Scott was at the crossroads of a role player and a player who could have a major impact on the game, and the latter way to describe him developed within him towards the end of the season. This year, he’s definitely going to have to be a player who immensely impacts the game throughout the entire season, which means not only making shots but also attempting more than seven in a game, especially those against marquee opponents. In 35 games last year, Scott attempted double-digit shots just six times. As a senior leader, he’s going to have to attempt double-digit shots in at least 2.5 times as many games than last year.

3. With all the excitement of first-year head coach John Brannen and the system he is going to implement here in Clifton, it will take time for it to be fully established within the team. That belief was evident last night with the uncertainty a lot of players conveyed on offense. My commentating partner last night, Ashley Martin, pointed out that the Bearcats were playing a four-out, one-in system early on. Meaning, the Bearcats were moving the ball around the perimeter deep into the shot clock. I’m not sure if they were trying to find, as Brannen has detailed, the first available good shot, or looking for Chris Vogt or Jay Sorolla with an established position in the post. Either way, it looked like the Bearcats played with an uncertain look in their first game with John Brannen at the helm.

4. Speaking of Vogt, his foul accumulation had a significant impact on a game that was tightly officiated. Vogt accumulated five fouls in 13 minutes of play. I don’t need to be a math wiz to figure out that that’s one foul per x-amount of minutes. The point is, it impacted the game significantly. Four points on 2-5 shooting with four rebounds in 13 minutes is a very solid stat line. Imagine what Vogt’s stat line could be if he stays out of foul trouble in future games.

5. When Vogt was out, Jaume “Jay” Sorolla came in for the first time as a Bearcat and did a very admirable job. Not only was he perfect from shots inside the paint and the game overall, Sorolla also pulled down four rebounds and dished out two assists in 23 minutes off the bench. Not bad for a big man playing playing in his first game in a new system as a Bearcat.

6. Turnovers plagued the Bearcats mightily in the second half, with the Bearcats giving the ball away eight times to only three assists. Case in point: the Buckeyes clinged to a 30-29 lead, just like Rose clinged to her life raft in Titanic, from the 16:55 mark in the second half all the way until 13:17 remaining. In that span, despite Ohio State missing five straight shots, the Bearcats turned the ball over three times. They took fewer shots than turnovers at two misses. Playing on the road, ball security and making shots are critical to putting yourself in a position to win.

7. It’s hard, if not impossible, to be perfect in anything in life, but 14-23 from the free-throw line on the road is not going to win games. Period. Free-throw shooting has to get better, especially with a tougher non-conference schedule and a meat-grinder of a conference schedule looming.

8. I think the Buckeyes are a really good basketball team. Chris Holtmann has done a tremendous job bringing back the program to national attentiveness, and I think he is one of the most underrated head coaches in the country. In his postgame press conference, he said that a halftime adjustment was eliminating ball screens. That allowed Ohio State to just go out on the court and run their offense, and it resulted in 45 points in the second half that saw the Buckeyes shoot 11-20 (55%) from the field, 4-7 from three-point range and 19-24 (79.2%) from the free-throw line.

9. Going into last night, I thought if there was anybody on the Buckeyes who was going to be the difference maker it would be Kaleb Wesson, considering he had a team-high 15 points and seven rebounds against the Bearcats inside Fifth Third Arena last year. It turned out that it was more so Kyle Young than Wesson, as Young kick-started the Buckeyes offense in the first half with scoring in the paint and offensive rebounding and then continued to impose his will in the paint in the second half.

10. That said, Kaleb Wesson is becoming one of the best power forwards in the country, and his eight-point, 11-rebound night is indicative of that.

11. The biggest concern going into the season, as Ashley and I talked about before the game, was the lack of depth in the Bearcats frontcourt. Outside of Vogt’s experience playing within Brannen’s system at NKU, there are a bunch of unknown bigs on the roster. Mamoudou Diarra played only three minutes, without attempting a shot, and picked up a foul. Sorolla picked up three fouls, and a bigger guard in Jerimiah Davenport picked up two fouls in three minutes. As much as the players who transferred in the offseason were Cronin-type players, I wish Nysier Brooks was still here to at least have a veteran and leader in the frontocurt who played a significant role in the success of last year’s team.

12. Next game: Mon. vs. Drake at 7 p.m.

Last year’s co-Missouri Valley Conference regular-season champion comes to Fifth Third Arena next Monday night for the Bearcats home-opener and Brannen’s first home game as the Bearcats head coach. Drake is an opponent that is a testament to the increasingly difficult nonconference schedule this season. Winners over Kennesaw State tonight 86-55, the Bulldogs present a mix of youth and experience with 10 freshman/sophomores, three seniors and four juniors. I expect Drake to come in and compete, but the Bearcats to ultimately bounce back and give Brannen his first win as head coach.

Score prediction: Bearcats 72   Drake 59