West Virginia vs Cincinnati Basketball Recap

West Virginia 74, Cincinnati 68

The Cincinnati Bearcats are running out of chances to send a favorable message to the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Committee. As the calendar begins to turn to March, a Big East bubble resident failed to nail down the quality win it will need on Selection Sunday.

It was another agonizing afternoon for coach Mick Cronin's crew, which has struggled so substantially in conference play this season. Cincinnati played hard, but without the skill level needed to take down a formidable foe on the road. The Bearcats outplayed West Virginia for most of the day, but the Mountaineers owned the final 13 minutes en route to a six-point triumph that dealt a major blow to UC's NCAA Tournament hopes.

The day at WVU Coliseum started out promisingly for Cincinnati. The Bearcats rolled up 37 points in the first 16 minutes and 47 seconds, taking a 37-24 lead at the 3:13 mark and forcing Bob Huggins - the Mountaineers' coach - to angrily call a timeout and demand better defense from his ballclub. That tactic basically worked, but with 13:35 remaining, the visitors from the state of Ohio still owned a 52-45 working margin. Just six days after losing to Marquette in overtime, Cronin's crew - which beat woeful DePaul earlier in the week - needed to register the kind of result that would make a national splash. Cincy's best Big East wins have come against a Connecticut team that's not yet assured of reaching the NCAA Tournament, so it was highly advisable for the Bearcats to knock off a resident of the top 15 national rankings. Such scalps have to be tucked away in order to become a worthy member of the field of 65. Everyone on the visitors' bench in Morgantown, W. Va., knew the score.

No one on that same bench, however, was able to deliver the goods down the stretch.

West Virginia ripped off an 11-0 run to take a 56-52 lead with 11:10 left, and then the two teams settled into a hotly-contested slugfest as the action continued.

The big difference in the latter stages of regulation was found on the glass. West Virginia outrebounded Cincinnati by a 41-30 margin... not always by virtue of boxing out better, but certainly by displaying quicker and softer hands on loose balls. A number of 50-50 balls went to the Mountaineers not because of positioning, but because the leather sphere slipped off the paws of a Bearcat.

Even though West Virginia did not shoot well on Saturday (42.6 percent), the Mountaineers' strength and superiority near the rim allowed the home team to prevent Cincinnati from running and getting fast-break baskets. The Mountaineers' rebounding ability also came into play once WVU took a 66-60 lead with 4:59 left on - coincidentally enough - a stickback basket by forward Devin Ebanks.

With a six-point advantage heading into the final few minutes of regulation, West Virginia benefited not only from getting defensive stops, but from denying Cincinnati as many possessions as possible. On two different offensive sequences in the final few minutes, WVU failed to score but still grabbed an offensive board. These two trips down the floor produced zero points, but they drained a total of one minute and 50 seconds of clock time. Cincinnati's defense remained solid to the end, but because the Mountaineers were able to shorten the game by crashing the glass and resetting possessions to the top of the key, the Bearcats had to be letter-perfect from the field in order to pull off the upset.

They couldn't.

UC guard Lance Stephenson went 4 of 16 from the field (25 percent) on a day when his teammates hit a modest but respectable 44 percent of their shots (19 of 43), and the lack of a consistent pure shooter effectively ruined Cincinnati's hopes of a comeback.

The calculus is simple now for Cincinnati: beat Villanova and Georgetown to close the regular season. Anything less and the Bearcats will finish under. 500 in the Big East. That's how an NIT bid gets created.

Mick Cronin can only hope his kids will figure things out in the coming week.

by Matt Zemek
BigEast-fans.com Correspondent