Baylor 2/25 7:00 pm ESPN2

[BearKatz]

Thank you Thomas for the Scrappy play on the floor!

Great Win Tonight!!!!

[Gmann]

Everything is tough with this group. It would have been devastating to the program if they had blown this one. More a feeling of relief rather than joy. Soldier on.

[sedz]

Torvik predicted a 69-67 win. Bullseye.

[longtimefan]

Thank you Thomas for the Scrappy play on the floor!

Great Win Tonight!!!!

That’s the type of Bearcats play we got used to for 35 years. Great to see that effort.

[BearKatz]

That’s the type of Bearcats play we got used to for 35 years. Great to see that effort.

The Bandaogo kick out on the missed FT was great! But, to me that was the play that sealed the victory tonight! Gritty play by Thomas! Need more of it down the stretch.

[GoBearcats31]

Not sure how they held on. Kudos to the Bearcats. Strong February after a dreadful January.

Next up: March basketball and still playing meaningful games.

[zykarious]

The Bandaogo kick out on the missed FT was great! But, to me that was the play that sealed the victory tonight! Gritty play by Thomas! Need more of it down the stretch.

Thomas was awesome on defense and fighting for the ball tonight. It was unfortunately balanced out by his poor play on offense, but his last play tipped the scales in his favor.

[Rufus]

Great win for the 'cats. The boards game was crucial to this win. Fantastic ieffort all game except for the slack off in the first ten minutes of the second half.

[Bearcat9796]

got great seats at 1pm amongst the quiet old folks, got them rowdy, ur welcome

[GoBearcats31]

@SeanPaulCBB:

”I’m kinda buying Cincinnati stock. The Bearcats scored 1.15 ppp today, marking a third time in four games with 1.00 ppp or more.

The Bearcats are close to a top 30 offense in CBB this month per Torvik. We know Cincy can defend, if they can keep scoring, there’s a lot of reason to like them.”

[sedz]

As noted by GoBearcats31 , we put up 1.15 points per possession for the second game in a row, and we've scored at least 0.98 in each of the last 7 games. We only got to the rim 17 times but we were very efficient there, converting 59%. We made 10 threes and outscored Baylor by 5 at the free throw line, which helped offset another dreadful 36% performance from midrange.

Mitchell was our best player with 4.0 net points, which was good to see because he was our worst player in the first matchup against Baylor. Mitchell scored an efficient 13 points on 9 shots with 9 rebounds and 3 assists. Reed was second best with 3.2 net points, leading in offensive BPM thanks to a very efficient 9 points from the field on only 5 shots plus a couple free throws, 4 rebounds, and 2 assists with zero turnovers. Day Day was just behind with 2.4 net points, putting up a game best 6.5 defensive BPM and leading with 4 assists and 3 steals. Betsey also had positive net points, making his only three and grabbing a couple boards.

Jizzle had the worst game with negative 6 net points. He was a dreadful 3 of 12 from inside the arc and only had one assist. He also had a negative defensive BPM. Skillings was next worst with negative 2.6 net points. Everyone else was close to neutral. Aziz had a nice defensive game and Simas made a couple threes but was poor defensively.

Our Wins Above Bubble (WAB) is now up to -0.1 with chances against KState (0.3) and OKSt (0.4) to bump that up 0.6, close to the 1.0 cut line. Of course if we lose either of those games we'll drop back below zero. If we can manage to knock off Houston that's worth almost a full WAB (0.94).

[GoBearcats31]

UC moved ZERO spots on the NET and KenPom

Baylor slipped one spot in NET to 31, so not presently a Quad 1 win.

[GoBearcats31]

Side note -- for anyone watching on TV last night... When UC was up 69-67 and Dillon Mitchell went to the line for a 1-and-1 with under 2 seconds, did you catch one of the announcers suggesting that if Dillon made the first they might consider having him miss the second intentionally? Putting aside that I had as much chance as Dillon of hitting both free throws in a 1-and-1 opportunity, in what circumstance would UC have a chance to go up by 4 points with less than 2 seconds and the strategy would be to miss???

[Gmann]

Side note -- for anyone watching on TV last night... When UC was up 69-67 and Dillon Mitchell went to the line for a 1-and-1 with under 2 seconds, did you catch one of the announcers suggesting that if Dillon made the first they might consider having him miss the second intentionally? Putting aside that I had as much chance as Dillon of hitting both free throws in a 1-and-1 opportunity, in what circumstance would UC have a chance to go up by 4 points with less than 2 seconds and the strategy would be to miss???

In no circumstance. I thought the same thing.

[leo from jersey]

got great seats at 1pm amongst the quiet old folks, got them rowdy, ur welcome

I'm old but I am rowdy far beyond many youth -- groovy too