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By Bill Koch
Go.BEARCATS.com
CINCINNATI - They said they had learned their lesson. They would not let Thursday's upset win over No. 23 SMU cause them to lose their edge against a weaker opponent as they did last Sunday when they lost at East Carolina after knocking off defending national champion Connecticut.
The University of Cincinnati Bearcats were true to their word, at least for the first half. But after they built a 16-point lead, they surely did lose their edge in the second and it almost cost them again.
In the end, though, they were rescued by three straight treys by the previously slumping Kevin Johnson and another key basket by Shaq Thomas to pull out a 63-58 victory over South Florida on Saturday night before 11,670 fans at Fifth Third Arena.
"I'm not pleased with how we played for a large portion of the game but we survived what could have been disaster for us in the RPI in a lot of ways and found a way to win the game," said associate head coach Larry Davis.
Indeed it would have been a major setback for the Bearcats (17-6 overall, 8-3 in the American Athletic Conference) if they had dropped their second game in less than a week to a sub-200 RPI team.
They were on the verge of doing just that when USF (7-17, 1-10), which trailed by 11 at halftime, scored the first eight points of the second half to get back into contention. Then, after UC rebuilt its lead to eight, the Bulls went on a 13-1 run to take a 41-37 lead with 10:27 to play.
"I should have called timeout earlier," Davis said. "I'm going to take a hit on that one. A little bit of it is my confidence in them defensively that we're going to get a stop."
Eventually, the Bearcats did get some stops, but what really saved them was an unlikely flurry of three consecutive 3-pointers by sophomore guard Johnson, who scored all 11 of his points within the span of four minutes and eight seconds in the second half to reclaim the lead for UC.
After the game, he shrugged off the fact that he had missed his previous 10 3-pointers.
"It happens," he said. "LeBron James misses 10 shots at times, too, and he's the greatest player in the universe. It's just staying confident within myself and understanding that my team believes in me that I can hit that shot."
That still didn't put the Bulls away, though. They were within one point after a Troy Holston Jr. 3-pointer when Thomas came up with the play of the game, slipping inside the USF defense to tip in a missed Johnson 3-pointer while getting fouled by Bo Ziegler. He then made the free throw for a 3-point play that gave UC a 54-50 lead with 1:50 to play. They were his only three points of the night.
Remember, it was Thomas' 3-pointer late in the game with the shot clock approaching zero that buried SMU in Dallas two nights earlier.
"Shaq had one bucket tonight," Davis said. "He got an offensive rebound after he got called for over-the-back. He could have stopped going but he didn't. It was the difference in the game and then the last gasp they had, the ball was loose on the floor and people were reaching for it and Shaq finally dove after it and tipped the ball away to somebody else."
The Bearcats finished it off with nine points in the final minute, five by Troy Caupain and four by Farad Cobb, who scored 16 points off the bench to lead UC. Cobb, who has averaged 14.3 points in his last three games, made his first three shots, then missed his next eight before making a three with 3:37 to go. But he didn't lose his aggressiveness.
"I started off hot, then got kind of cold," Cobb said. "I just kept playing."
USF, which was led by Corey Allen Jr.'s 18 points, lost for the ninth straight time, but threw a major scare into the Bearcats just as they did to first-place Tulsa before succumbing in overtime on Jan. 31.
"I can't tell you how proud I am of those guys," said USF coach Orlando Antigua. "They battled after going down, playing on the road and defending the way we did. We shot the ball well in the second half. Now we just have to put a full game together."
UC shot only 36.7 percent and allowed the Bulls to shoot 45.3 percent, but the Bearcats' defense was there when they needed it to be, as they held their seventh straight opponent to fewer than 60 points, the third-longest such streak in school history.
Ultimately, the Bearcats would be able to sleep peacefully Saturday night, knowing that they avoided a loss that Davis acknowledged would have moved them closer to the NCAA Tournament bubble.
"We found enough ways to do it, to get the W," Davis said. "You hate it when you're up 16 and you don't put a team away. That's something our young team is going to have to learn how to do because eventually it'll bite you if you don't. When you've got a team down 16 you've got to slowly grind them down and put then away."
With Tulsa losing its first conference game of the season to SMU on Saturday night, there are now four teams - Tulsa, SMU, UC and Temple - separated by no more than two games at the top of the conference standings. The Bearcats play at Temple on Tuesday night, with the Owls looking to avenge an 84-53 loss to UC at Fifth Third Arena on Jan. 17.
"They know what we did here at Cincinnati so they're definitely going to come out and play," Johnson said. "We just have to match their intensity, stick to what we do, and come out victorious."
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 Fifth Third Arena for a 2 p.m. match-up. Make your Valentine's Day plans by calling 877-CATS-TIX or visiting BearcatsBasketball.com.