Baylor 2/25 7:00 pm ESPN2

[leo from jersey]

Good for a win - good to see SL hitting some 3s and of course the MVP Mr. Josh "do everything quietly" Reed.

[GoBearcats31]

Remaining games:

Saturday - at Houston (#3 in the NET -- obviously a Quad 1 game which, if UC won, would significantly boost the resume/metrics)
Wednesday - Kansas State (#81 in NET ... Quad 3 if they do not get within 75; must win obviously)
Saturday - at Oklahoma State (#95 in NET ... Quad 2 if they stay within 100; must win obviously)

Big 12 Tournament
1-50 neutral opponents are Quad 1: Houston, Texas Tech, Iowa State, Kansas, BYU, Baylor, West Virginia (currently 45)
51-100 opponents are Quad 2: Arizona State, Utah, TCU, UCF, Kansas State, Colorado (currently 93), OSU (currently 95)

The NET is an imperfect metric and not solely relied upon (UC, if I recall correctly, had one of the higher NET ratings last year to miss the tournament), but rather one measuring stick. So getting caught up in the quads is whatever, but obviously outside of a Houston win on Saturday you'd want to play the Cougars well, take down KSU and Oklahoma State and then presumably need at least one Big 12 win but likely more. Of course, last year there was a much higher than usual number of "bid thieves" so that knocked several bubble teams out.

As of today, UC is in 12th place in the league but a game back of TCU/Baylor/WVU who are all tied for 7th. If UC finished 9th, they'd face the last place team in KC. If UC finished 10th, they'd play the second-to-last team. If UC finished 11th, they'd play the third-to-last team... In other words, if UC plays itself into legitimate consideration, beating a Colorado or Arizona State or UCF in the first game of the Big 12 may not move the needle a ton. But one game at a time...


Tonight: KSU at UCF; Utah at Arizona; BYU at Arizona State ... probably want UCF to win and definitely want BYU to keep winning. Utah is tricky because the better they do, the better UC's win was; however, if Utah wins they also move to 8-9 in the league compared with UC's 7-10.

[Bearcat93]

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???

The way I heard it was that if UC intentionally missed, with Baylor having no time outs, UC banging it against the rim or some such intentional miss, there would be no time left, versus allowing Baylor to at least possess and getting a super slim full court shot. Kind of iffy, but I could see what he meant, at least.

[Rufus]

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

So true. Which makes this teams production and play so much more a mystery beginning the conference schedule.

[GoBearcats31]

For what it is worth, Joe Lunardi--who statistically is NOT a good bracketologist--slid UC up from 10th team out to 7th team out but there are a ton of bubble teams playing tonight that could be of interest, in order below of his seed list:

Vanderbilt at #12 Texas A&M (7 p.m. - SEC)
#17 Kentucky at Oklahoma (9 p.m. - SEC)
Texas at Arkansas (9 p.m. - ESPN2)
Ohio State at USC (10:30 p.m. - BTN)
Virginia at Wake Forest (9 p.m. - ESPNU)
Penn State at Indiana (8:30 p.m. - BTN)
SMU at Cal (11 p.m. - ESPNU)
Utah State at Boise State (10:30 p.m. - FS1)
Fordham at George Mason (7 p.m. - ESPN+)
Villanova at Seton Hall (8:30 p.m. - FS1)
San Francisco at Oregon State (11 p.m. - CBSSN)

I note that the SEC is loaded, but Arkansas and Texas are 5-9 (loser drops to 5-10) and Oklahoma is 4-10...

[leeraymond]

With the big win last night, UC matched its wins total in conference play from last year (7-11). However, there are two more conference games than last year. Also, with UC holding Baylor to 67 points, UC has now held 22 of 28 opponents under 70 points (78.57% of opponents). None of the nonconference opponents scored over 68 points (Villanova). In conference play, UC has held approximately 65% of its opponents under 70.

The question is: what happened to UC's offense in January? For the first nine conference games (basically spanned the month of January), UC averaged 60.6 points a game. Since then, UC has averaged 73.1 points a game. What happened to the offense over the first 9 games?

[sedz]

Dave Ommen at Bracketville (much better track record than Lunardi) has us as the 4th team out behind X, Ohio St, and UNC.

Baylor, Vandy, Indiana, and Georgia are his last four in. Georgia picked up a huge win over Florida last night. They are only in 14 of 116 on bracketmatrix, but they will leap up after today's update.

We are in one lonely bracket right now, submitted by CollegeFootballNews.

[GoBearcats31]

Dave Ommen at Bracketville (much better track record than Lunardi) has us as the 4th team out behind X, Ohio St, and UNC.

Baylor, Vandy, Indiana, and Georgia are his last four in. Georgia picked up a huge win over Florida last night. They are only in 14 of 116 on bracketmatrix, but they will leap up after today's update.

We are in one lonely bracket right now, submitted by CollegeFootballNews.

Major flaws in the three teams you mentioned right ahead of UC:
Xavier -- 1-8 in Q1 games (Saturday home game versus NET 34 Creighton, currently Q2, is pretty much a must win)
OSU -- 15-13 record ... if they lose 15 games (at least one down the stretch, one in BTT) will be tough to overcome despite solid metrics, some good wins
UNC -- 1-10 in Q1 games, with Miami (Q4!!!), at Virginia Tech (Q3) and Duke (Q1) still to play

To be fair, UC is 1-9 in Q1 games (9-11 top two quads compared with 7-10 for UNC, 6-10 for X), though this is all fluid of course

[sedz]

One thing that hurts us is a lack of marquee wins. We are 0-5 in Q1-A games. We just have a trio right around the Q1/2 cut line (28 BYU, 31 Baylor, 78 @UCF). Most bubble teams have better wins than those.

[London 'Cat]

My objective opinion is UC must win the Big XII tournament to secure a bid to the NCAA tournament. As mentioned above, 1-9 in Q1 games. Even if UC wins the remaining 3 regular season games, they would be 2-9 in Q1 wins. That’s not good enough.