TicketsCincinnati had to muscle down to walk away with a win in this one.
After jumping out to a 9-point halftime lead and extending it to 17 early in the second half, the Detroit Titans roared back to within one and forced Cincinnati to respond with five minutes to go.
Fortunately, the Bearcats got some defensive stops, and center Michelle Jones hit two key layups down the stretch to help seal the victory.
Cincinnati's shooting went cold midway through the second half, allowing Detroit to come back, and part of the problem for UC was definitely shot selection. Rather than trying to get the ball inside consistently, the team attempted 29 three point shots, only connecting on nine of them.
"One thing I told my guys at the end of the game, we can't live and die by the three point shot," said head coach Jamelle Elliott. "Some of them were open, some of them were contested, but I think we were just settling for the three ... and we didn't have any guys on the offensive boards to get second shots."
As Elliott stressed after the game, when UC had built a lead, they should have been trying to get the ball inside rather than throwing up shots from outside the arc. When they finally did go inside, they were able to seal the victory.
Early on, Jones scored inside for 4 of UC's first 6 points, but then they drifted away from the paint until late in the second half. Even though they built a big lead, the shooting went cold; if the Bearcats had gone back inside sooner, they could have prevented the Titans from clawing back into the game.
As the season goes on, Cincinnati needs to learn how to control the game when they have a lead, including going inside rather than forcing up ill-advised long-range shots.
"We have to do that more often and consistently throughout the game," Elliott said. "It can't just be the first ten minutes of the game, then we launch threes for fifteen minutes, and then go back to it at the end of the game. We have to be more consistent with getting [Jones] the ball inside, as well as our other low post players."
When Cincinnati starts to do that on a regular basis, successful offense down low will open up long range shots. As we've already seen this year, the Bearcats have several players who are assassins from beyond the arc, but the offense has to start down low.
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