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By Bill Koch
GoBearcats.com
CINCINNATI - When there's a 7-foot-6 center with an 8-foot-4 wingspan standing in your way every time you venture into the lane with the ball, you don't have much choice to but to take it outside and shoot from a safer distance.
That's how much the presence of Central Florida's Tacko Fall can alter a team's normal offensive approach.
"He's just a huge human being," said University of Cincinnati forward Kyle Washington.
Washington, a towering 6-foot-9 in his own right, made the adjustment, scoring 14 points - four of which came on 3-pointers - to lead the Bearcats to their 15th straight victory, a 60-50 decision over UCF on Wednesday night before 9,510 fans at Fifth Third Arena.
"We just had to do what we did against UConn," Washington said, "spread them out but keep on moving too, not necessarily always settle for threes. That was the game plan, just to keep him moving because he has a hard time moving and in transition."
Washington added 11 rebounds to record his seventh double-double of the season and sophomore Jacob Evans bounced back from his subpar effort against Connecticut last Saturday to score 11 points for the 11th-ranked Bearcats, who won for the 23rd straight time at home and improved their record to 22-2 overall, 11-0 in the American Athletic Conference.
The Knights ( 15-9, 6-6) lost for the fifth time in their last six games.
Fall also had a double-double with 14 points and 11 rebounds, making all seven of his field goal attempts - five on dunks and two on tip-ins. But he also committed six turnovers as the Bearcats surrounded him every time he touched the ball near the basket.
"If you don't swarm him he's just gonna dunk it," said UC coach Mick Cronin. "He doesn't even have to jump."
UC shot only 35.4 percent from the field against the team that leads the nation in field goal percentage defense, but the Bearcats made nine of 29 from 3-point range. The 29 long-range attempts were the second most of the season for UC, but Cronin, who usually prefers to attack the basket more aggressively, was OK with the long-distance attack in this instance.
"You don't play games like that where you can't take the ball in at him," Cronin said, "and they're just giving you open shots and your kids are like, should I shoot it? You've got an open shot almost every time down the floor. We won anyway, despite our struggles from the field, and most of them were wide open looks."
The Bearcats played some pretty stick defense themselves, limiting USF to 39.6 percent shooting in a defensive effort that elicited praise from their usually hard-to-please coach.
"I was really, really happy with our effort tonight," Cronin said. "I thought we played extremely hard on defense. We had 47 deflections, 12 steals, and we held a team to 50 points. You can't ask for much more than that from a defensive effort."
The Bearcats scored the first nine points of the game and led, 12-2, after a Kevin Johnson 3-pointer with 14:49 to play. Their biggest lead was 30-15 with 5:34 left in the half. UCF then outscored UC, 13-4, and trailed by only six at halftime, 34-28.
UCF committed four quick turnovers early in the second half and UC took advantage by increasing its six-point lead to 12, thanks to two 3-pointers by Johnson. With the Bearcats leading, 46-32, the Knights scored nine points in a row to close to within five with 10:39 to play. Gary Clark then hit a jump shot for UC to make it 48-41 and Jarron Cumberland converted a 3-point play to get the lead back to 10 with 8:55 remaining. The Knights got the lead back to seven one more time before the Bearcats pulled away.
Evans, who averages 13.5 points per game, was sufficiently chastened after the UConn game to do some soul-searching. He had only one deflection in that game, a mortal sin for a UC player in Cronin's estimation. He responded with 18 deflections against UCF, "probably a record for a guy that's played for me," Cronin said.
"I just had to refocus and get back to playing hard,"Evans said, "because I feel like when I'm playing hard that's when I get my confidence offensively. I just wanted to come out tonight and be aggressive on defense and try to get in the passing lane and get it done in transition, get some easy baskets and get our team going. It was a learning point for me. This year I want us to be special and I know I can't go out there and perform like I did. I'm not putting on pressure on myself, but I knew I can do better."
The Bearcats, who insist they don't get carried away by their No. 11 ranking, will now have three days to prepare for Sunday's showdown at No. 25 SMU. The Mustangs are 20-4 overall, 10-1 in the league and trail the Bearcats by just one in the AAC standings. They've won six straight since they lost to UC at Fifth Third Arena, 66-64, on Jan. 12.
"This is the best team I've ever played on," Evans said. "It's the most I've ever won.
We just have that mindset that the hungry dog gets the bone. We might play some teams that are not ranked in our conference, but if they're hungrier than us that night, then they're gonna get the bone, so we know that ranking beside your name doesn't mean anything."
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.