Cincinnati Basketball: Bearcats blow past Temple 84-54 in AAC Tournament quarterfinals

Despite trailing by double digits early on, the Bearcats stormed back and eventually secured an 84-54 win over Temple to clinch a spot in the AAC Tournament semifinals on Saturday.

Cincinnati freshman forward Daniel Skillings Jr scored a career-high 20 points and six rebounds off the bench as Wes Miller’s team improved to 4-0 when he reaches double figures this season.

Landers Nolley II notched a game-high 22 points on 4/8 shooting from 3-point range, while Mika Adams-Woods added 20 points, five assists, two rebounds and one steal to fuel the Bearcats.

Temple jumped out to a 16-6 lead in the opening minutes but Cincinnati answered with a 17-4 run, highlighted by a deep 3-pointer from Jeremiah Davenport to take a lead in the first half.

Cincinnati Basketball: Bearcats blow past Temple 84-54 in AAC Tournament quarterfinals

Even though the game was already out of the reach, Kalu Ezikpe threw down a vicious two-handed dunk in the final minutes to put the finishing touches on an impressive performance.

With a chance to advance to the conference championship game, the Bearcats take on first place Houston in the AAC Tournament semifinals tomorrow at 3:00 PM on ESPN2 and fuboTV.

During a postgame press conference, Miller broke down the blowout win over Temple and looked ahead to the semifinals matchup against top ranked Houston via Cincinnati Athletics.

"“I’m pleased with the win. I thought early in the game, they came out with an incredible amount of energy and we just needed to settle down. We were a little flustered early and they made a couple of tough shots over the top. After we kind of got through the first seven or eight minutes, we settled in and made the simple play with the ball. We started making the simple play and some good things happened.”"