Cincinnati Bearcats Basketball To Host Iowa State Cyclones This Season

The Cincinnati Bearcats will be hosting the Iowa State Cyclones at Fifth Third Arena this season, according to Jon Rothstein at CBS Sports. The game will be the first half of a home-and-home in which UC will return the favor on December 1st, 2016.

"Cincinnati and Iowa State will begin a home-and-home series next season, multiple sources told CBSSports.com. The first game in the series will be played at Cincinnati on Dec. 22, with the second game in the series being played at Iowa State on Dec. 1, 2016."

Yet another notch in the Bearcats’ belt come NCAA Tournament time. Win or lose this game Cincinnati is continuing the strategy of loading up in the non-conference schedule to compensate for weak RPI games in the AAC (looking at you East Carolina, UCF, USF, Tulane, and Houston).

This past season Cincinnati was able to boost their resume by avoiding those half-a-dozen sub-300 RPI teams that dogged them in the past. Coupled with facing the likes of North Carolina Central, San Diego State, VCU, North Carolina State, and Xavier, all NCAA Tournament teams, and the Bearcats were sitting pretty come conference play. All they had to do was not screw the pooch against AAC opponents, which they for the most part succeeded in doing, and were rewarded come Selection Sunday.

Cincinnati’s rolling out the same strategy in 2015 with the addition of Iowa State to the schedule. The Cyclones were a 3 seed in last year’s NCAA Tournament having miraculously clawed their way to a Big 12 Championship. Like the Bearcats, they return most of their key contributors from that squad and look to build on that for bigger and better things in 2015-16.

When December 22nd comes around we could be looking a match up between two top-10 teams. The roof at Fifth Third Arena should be darn near blown off the walls by the time they tip off.