Throughout the college basketball season, Matt Fargo will take a look at the teams that should whet your betting appetite, good or bad. We all know about Florida, North Carolina and UCLA, but with 336 teams in Division I collegiate hoops, there are plenty of teams that fly under the radar. Today’s session:
Cincinnati Bearcats
Just five years ago, Cincinnati won 31 games and was a perennial national powerhouse. The Bearcats had a decent season in their first round in the Big East last year, going 8-8 in the conference and 21-13 overall and making a run at the NIT before falling to eventual champion North Carolina. South. They suffered quite a bit with the loss of head coach Bob Huggins, but this season could be the toughest in a long time in Cincinnati.
New head coach Mick Cronin has shown he’s a winner by turning around the Murray St. team and returning to the Cincinnati program, where he used to be a player and assistant coach. He comes with very little to work with and is already proving to be a difficult challenge. The Bearcats are 6-2 to start the season, but there are plenty of issues surrounding this team despite a seemingly strong start. Cincinnati has played the 11th-easiest schedule in the nation, but that’s about to change.
The Bearcats have played five teams ranked 228th or worse and have actually lost one of them, a one-point setback to Wofford. Cincinnati gained some confidence last weekend with a neutral court win over Temple, but it took an 18-0 run to clinch the victory thanks to the Owls being frozen. The Bearcats have yet to play a real road game and actually won’t until Jan. 4. In the meantime, they have games against Xavier, Ohio St., NC State and Ohio before that first road game in Memphis.
The Bearcats lost 54 points, 23.7 rebounds and 11.5 assists to graduate and with nine new players on the roster, there will be growing pains. Cronin’s style is to run and apply as much pressure as possible, but he won’t be able to do that with this team. He prefers to be nine or 10 players deep, but so far, he only has seven players averaging double digits in minutes and it’s basically a six-man rotation, with the seventh having just over 10 minutes of action.
A half-court offense won’t solve anything, as the Bearcats are shooting just 44.2 percent from the floor, including 34.8 percent from behind the arc despite playing one of the easiest schedules in the country. JUCO signing John Williamson is the leading scorer with 15.8 points per game as he shoots a solid 60 percent from the floor. After that, it’s a mess. No other player is shooting above 44 per cent, while the backcourt combines for a spiky 34.9 per cent accuracy from the field.
The Bearcats are shooting just 65.9 percent from the charity line after shooting 74.7 percent last season. The problem lies with Williamson, as he gets to the line more than any other player, but he’s shooting just 48.9 percent. It will soon become apparent that the opposition will make him go to the wall as a way of slowing him down. Cincinnati has gone to the line just three more times than the opposition after tallying nearly 100 more attempts last season. He has to be more aggressive.
Freshman Deonta Vaughn is having a good year in point, averaging 15.6 ppg and 4.9 apg, while keeping turnovers low, averaging 2.8 per game. However, the rest of the team isn’t being as efficient, as they’ve posted an assist/turnover ratio of 0.85 after removing Vaughn’s stats. The good news is that the Bearcats have allowed a 0.54 ratio, but as the schedule gets tougher, that will increase. Four of their next six games are against teams with ratings of 1.17 or better.
With a 6-2 record, we could see the Bearcats getting more value than they should. They host rival Xavier on Wednesday, easily their biggest test of the season so far, followed by a game against Ohio St. in Indianapolis on Saturday. Cincinnati doesn’t sit well with either team so it could be a game against either situation depending on the lines. We could see a quick fall for the Bearcats and one they won’t be able to recover from when the Big East season begins.