We’ve got our first repeat game of the season as we’re heading to the House that Oscar Robertson built. Cincinnati has been a .500 ball club this year, and even though their record isn’t as scary as what we’ve played the last few games, I certainly don’t think that they’re just going to roll over and die.
After the Baylor loss, at least in my mind, we have the play perfect basketball from here on out if we want to go dancing in March. Does that make me anxious? Yes. Is this team going to play well enough to not make me anxious? I doubt it.
The Bearcats this year are known for their defensive pressure and in the first half they certainly made us work for it. We didn’t hit a 3, we shot 35% from the field, and we also turned the ball over A LOT. I would have been okay with our effort if we were also pressuring them, but that just wasn’t the case for the most part. Guys like Baba Miller and Jizzle James were getting any look they wanted with little distractions, and when you combine that with our lack of offense you can imagine how we ended the first half; down 30-20.
We did, however, always find a way to stop the bleeding. Every time it seemed like they were about to go on a huge run, Brenen Lorient or Jasper Floyd were able to get us a bucket. It wasn’t a lot of offense, and we certainly will need more if we want to win this game, but I’ll take some effort over zero effort any day.
How we react to the second half will say a lot about our team. If we come out hot I think we have a really good chance to come back. If we’re flat like we were most of the 1st, I think this will unfortunately end with another loss.
After a slow start (and a 0-3 shooting effort) Honor Huff started to find his shot at the 14 minute mark. His biggest asset to this team is his “next shot” mentality; it doesn’t matter if he’s 0-1 or 0-100. If he’s open he will let it fly, and because of that mentality he was able to chip away at this lead single handedly. Honor hit 3 threes in a row, followed by a great dribble drive which ended in an And-1 which he converted, so in short order he went from 0 to 12 points and cut the deficit to three points.
After the 12 minute mark TV timeout, Honor picked up right were he left off. Honor has a habit of settling for jump shots after he sees a couple go through the net, but he’s done a GREAT job at using his gravity to get into the lane. As soon as he touched the ball he went to work and earned himself another And-1 opportunity (although he didn’t convert this one). No time to worry about that, however, because we were down as much as 14 at one point and how at the half way mark in the 2nd half it’s a 1 point game.
After that flurry of offense both teams went a bit cold as they scored a combined 13 points in the next 7 minutes. I don’t expect two teams who pride themselves on defense to allow a lot of offense, but it would be nice to see us score some points, ya know?
There were a few moments where I was scared, but thanks to some timely 3s from DJ Thomas, we were able to squeak this one out. I’m not sure that we should have won this game in all honesty: we shot worse then they did, they outrebounded us, and they were objectively the better defensive team. I’d usually get hung up on things like that and go on some tirade but I really needed a win today so I’ll leave it alone. Besides, I think it was Socrates who said “SCOREBOARD!”
We take this one 59-54 and we’ll have about 48 hours to celebrate before we have to host 13th ranked Texas Tech. I have my concerns about that one but I’ll leave it be for now.
The Roundball Big 3 of the Game:
Honor Huff – 16 points (all in the 2nd half), 6 assists
DJ Thomas – 14 points, 2 clutch 3PM
Brenen Lorient – 10 points
A good win today despite how much they stressed me out. I think you would have enjoyed the ride. I love you, Dad. I miss you. I’ll see you Sunday.
Round The Game 
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