Tickets
By Bill Koch
Go.BEARCATS.com
PHILADELPHIA - The University of Cincinnati Bearcats have developed a severe turnover problem that they must rectify soon if they're going to make a strong push during the final seven games of the regular season and into the American Athletic Conference tournament.
They're painfully aware of the malady. The question is, what are they going to do about it?
For the third straight game, turnovers were a major issue for UC, which committed 17 of them in a 75-59 loss to Temple on Tuesday night before 6,603 fans at Liacouras Center. The turnovers led to a whopping 27 points for the Owls, while UC managed just four points off eight Temple turnovers.
"That has got to stop," said UC associate head coach Larry Davis. "We can't turn the ball over like that and be a good team."
Factor in the 21 points, five assists and four steals by Temple senior point guard Will Cummings and it's easy to understand how the same UC team that beat the Owls by 31 points on Jan. 17 at Fifth Third Arena could lose to them by 16 in a 47-point turnaround just a few weeks later. Cummings did not play in the first game due to injury.
The loss dropped the Bearcats (17-7 overall, 8-4 in the American) out of a third-place tie with Temple (18-7, 9-3) and left them three games behind first-place Tulsa with only six conference games to play.
The Owls have won their last six games since their loss to UC and ended the Bearcats' streak of holding 27 straight opponents under 70 points. UC received only four points from Gary Clark and none from Jermaine Sanders. Those are their two starting forwards.
The Bearcats committed five turnovers in the first five minutes and 11 in the first half. They trailed by 10 points with just under 15 minutes left in the half and by 11 at halftime. Unlike the SMU game last week, when they were able to overcome their sloppy play at the game's outset, every one of their comeback attempts was thwarted by Temple. And they have not forgotten that they also committed a spate of turnovers in the closing minutes of their Feb. 1 loss at East Carolina that allowed the Pirates to overcome a 7-point deficit in the final 3:23.
"We've got to make better decisions with the ball as a team," said junior guard Farad Cobb, who led the Bearcats with 13 points, all in the second half. "The bigs sometimes are getting trapped down low and even the guards, we've just got to make better decisions and take care of the ball. We can't keep digging ourselves in a hole."
This was the third game in six days for UC - the second on the road - but sophomore guard Troy Caupain said the Bearcats can't use fatigue to explain their poor play.
"It's basketball," he said. "It's what you do. If you want to play at the next level, there's 85 games and you've got to play every game like it's your last. That's one thing we didn't do tonight and that's one thing we're gonna talk about on the plane and when we get home for the rest of the season."
The Bearcats cut their 11-point halftime deficit to five with 13:27 left and had a chance to get closer when Kevin Johnson came up with a steal, but Johnson missed a pull-up jumper and Cummings scored at the other end to push the Owls' lead back to seven.
After Johnson's missed shot, UC was outscored, 17-5. By the 5:17 mark of the second half, Temple's lead had ballooned to 62-45. The Owls led by as many as 20 in the second half. The Bearcats never had a lead the entire game.
Davis was at a loss to offer an immediate explanation for the turnovers.
"We talk about it," Davis said. "We tell them to keep it simple. Don't to do things you can't do. You've got to walk that fine line between aggression and trying to do too much. You can't lay back and be scared to play, but at the same time …
"(Temple) was ready to play. We knew they'd be ready to play. I don't want to take anything away from Temple but some of it was us and our poor decisions and us trying to overdo it, and some of it was Temple doing a really good job defensively."
It was particularly irksome to Davis that the Bearcats lost by 16 on a night when they shot 52.4 percent on the road. They even made 7 of 16 from long range. But those respectable numbers meant little because of the turnovers.
Before the game, the UC players weren't naive enough to believe they would hang another 31-point loss on Temple. "We knew they were going to play better at home," Cobb said. But they certainly didn't expect to absorb their most lopsided conference defeat of the season.
UC doesn't play again until Saturday afternoon against Tulane at Fifth Third Arena. In the meantime, the players will have a chance to take a badly needed day off while the coaching staff tries to figure out how to correct what has become the Bearcats' most glaring weakness.
In other words, it's time for a little soul searching.
"We're a tired team right now," Davis said. "We're a young, inexperienced team. I've got to go back and look at it, look how we planned for it and how we practiced for it. I've got to evaluate myself as well as the kids. That's what a good coach does. I can't sit here and tell you it's all the kids' fault. I've got to see what I could have done better and how we could have done better from the sideline."
Bill Koch covered UC Athletics for 27 years - 15 at The Cincinnati Post and 12 at The Cincinnati Enquirer - before joining the staff of GoBEARCATS.com in January, 2015 as featured columnist. Follow him on Twitter @bkoch.
The Bearcats return home on Saturday, Feb. 14, when Tulane visits for a 2 p.m. contest. For tickets, call 877-CATS-TIX or visit BearcatsBasketball.com.