With the searing loss to Temple still on the minds of voters, the Cincinnati Bearcats have fallen out of the top 25 in both the AP and Coaches Polls, to the surprise of exactly nobody.
UC didn’t take as much of a hit in the Coaches Poll, where they came in at 29th with 19 votes, falling six spots. But it’s the AP Poll where they really felt it. The Bearcats plummeted 16 spots from 22nd all the way to 38th, receiving just a pair of votes from the pollsters. Apparently the loss to the 5-5 Owls didn’t sit so well with them.
But not to worry, a prime opportunity awaits Cincinnati on Thursday, when they travel to Dallas to face the #15 SMU Mustangs. A win in Moody Coliseum would surely get the Bearcats right with the voters and maybe push them back up into the top 25. But maybe they don’t want to be.
Since the crooked number was bestowed upon them in mid-November, the Bearcats have played rather awful basketball. It started in game one when they beat a paltry Southeastern Louisiana team by a score of 64-49. UC was only up eight at halftime of that one. While they played well in the Barclays Center Classic and won the tournament, Cincinnati wound up losing at the buzzer to Butler and Iowa State while getting blown out by Xavier. Then, of course, Temple happened.
So maybe this is a blessing in disguise. You’d think a veteran team like the Bearcats would embrace the national acclaim, using it to propel themselves to new heights. But apparently they’re not ready for that and a little adversity will do them some good. That’s the hope anyways. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what Thursday shows us.