South Florida vs Cincinnati Basketball Recap

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble, South Florida reduced Cincinnati to rubble. That's a somewhat exaggerated but still relevant way of describing an NCAA bubble battle that neither one of two teams could afford to lose.

It's been a wild week for Big East ballclubs that are sitting on the fence in college basketball's nationwide push toward the field of 65. The cut line distinguishing tourney teams from NIT entrants is a murky one, especially in the 16-school assemblage that meets every March in New York's Madison Square Garden. With the trip to the Big Apple just three weeks away, it's incredibly important for any bubble teams to win matchups against each other, so when 6-6 Cincinnati took on 5-7 South Florida Tuesday night, losing wasn't an option. If the Bearcats or Bulls wanted to achieve competitive parity with Louisville and Connecticut - two upset winners from Sunday and Monday, respectively - they needed to break through on Tuesday night at the USF Sun Dome.

South Florida managed to keep itself in the NCAA discussion. As for Cincinnati, turnabout was not-so-fair play.

One will recall that in this past Saturday's 60-48 upset win at Connecticut, coach Mick Cronin's Cincy squad held UConn to just 22 first-half points, and then to only five points in the first 10 minutes of the second half. The Bearcats gummed up an offense coached by Jim Calhoun, a Hall of Fame bench boss who simply couldn't find answers on the afternoon of Feb. 13. Just three days later, how ironic it was, then, that Cincinnati stood on the shadow side of this basketball divide. On this night in the Sunshine State, the black-shirted Bearcats knew only dark days at the offensive end of the floor.

Yes, it had to enter the minds of Cronin and his staff that Cincinnati played a first half of offense as bad as the one Connecticut served up against the Bearcats over the past weekend in Hartford. In this slugfest against South Florida, UC - which shot only 39 percent from the field, hit just three 3-pointers, and missed 10 of 26 foul shots - mustered only 23 points in the first half.

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If most observers thought that things couldn't get any worse in the second half, however, they were wrong.

A Cincinnati team that certainly seemed to be taking its cues from Connecticut scored only six points in the first 10 minutes of the second half. Stuck at a paltry 29 points, the Bearcats fell behind by 18 points and never again threatened to make the score particularly respectable. Yes, UC crept within 10 (54-44) with 2:16 left, but that's as close as Cronin's crew would get. The Bearcats fell to 6-7 in a bunched-up league, while the victorious Bulls attained the same conference mark and thereby kept themselves on the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee's radar screen. Neither team has pulled off a five-star upset of a Syracuse or Villanova, but both of these clubs can still make a charge at March Madness by winning battleground games.

Evidently, South Florida knows its way around a difficult terrain a lot better than Cincinnati does.

By Matt Zemek
DFN Sports Senior Staff Writer