Bearcats Basketball 2015-16 AAC Opponent Pairings Revealed

AAC opponent pairings for the Cincinnati Bearcats’ 2015-16 basketball schedule have been revealed, with a solid range of quality opponents to tack onto UC’s already high quality non-conference slate.

"The American Athletic Conference has announced the 2015-16 men’s basketball conference pairings and the dates for the 2016 championship. The 2016 championship will be played March 10-13, 2016 (Thursday to Sunday) at Amway Center in Orlando, as previously announced."

The American wisely kept Cincinnati’s home-and-homes against the pride of conference intact.

The Bearcats will play two games against UConn, Memphis, SMU, and Temple each. There’s eight games against teams that should finish in the top 50 in RPI. That’ll certainly boost UC’s resume come Selection Sunday. On top of that, if the Tulsa Golden Hurricanes add strong wins themselves in non-conference play, which killed their and everybody they played’s RPI last year, there’s another pair of games against a solid opponent.

I’m a little miffed that the Bearcats only get a single game with Tulane. The Green Wave hovered near the top of the conference for most of the season but lack of depth caused them to run on empty at the turn of the year. They return most of their key contributors and could be another top 50 or 100 opponent. But Cincinnati only gets to play them once in 2015-16.

Oh well!

The other one-off on the Bearcats’ AAC schedule is Central Florida. There’s really not much I can say about that decision by the conference. A weak opponent got a bit of an edge by getting Cincinnati home but at this point UC should be heavy favorites in this game. The only beef I have is that we’ll probably have to wait a year to see the 7’6″ Tacko Falls in person at Fifth Third Arena. Again, oh well!