TicketsRV/RV MISSISSIPPI STATE (8-0) at No. 25/RV CINCINNATI (7-2)
SERIES INFO: Fifth meeting; Series is tied 2-2; Series is tied 2-2 at neutral sites.
LAST MEETING: Cincinnati won 75-63 on Dec. 18, 2008 in the SEC/BIG EAST Invitational at U.S. Bank Arena in Cincinnati
STREAK: Cincinnati - 2
COACHES: Mick Cronin is in his 12th season at Cincinnati (244-137); 15th season overall (313-161)
Ben Howland is in his third season at Mississippi State (38-33); 22nd season overall (439-239)
AP/USA TODAY RANKINGS (DEC. 11): Cincinnati (25/RV); Mississippi State (RV/RV)
RADIO: 700 WLW; Dan Hoard provides play-by-play with color analyst Terry Nelson
TV: ESPN2; Kevin Brown provides play-by-play with color analyst John Thompson
JOIN THE CONVERSATION (TWITTER, FACEBOOK, INSTAGRAM): @GoBearcatsMBB or GoBearcatsMBB
TICKETS: Start at $50; Available on BB&T Arena Website; TicketMaster by calling 1-800-745-3000;
Sold at BB&T Arena box office beginning two hours prior to the start (depending on availability)
By Bill Koch
GoBearcats.com
CINCINNATI – During their first seven games this season, the University of Cincinnati Bearcats cruised to seven relatively easy victories with the exception of their six-point win over Buffalo.
Since then, the competition has become more challenging and the Bearcats have been unable to raise their level of play to meet it. They were soundly beaten by Xavier and outlasted by Florida, leaving them badly in need of a victory Tuesday against Mississippi State as they try to avoid their first three-game losing streak since February, 2015. Tipoff is 7 p.m. at BB&T Arena.
"Winning makes you soft," UC coach Mick Cronin said after Saturday's 66-60 loss to then-No. 5 Florida in the Never Forget Tribute Classic in Newark, N.J. "It makes you arrogant and it makes your players content. It's the hardest thing to deal with for any coach in any sport."
The Bearcats (7-2) fell from No. 17 to No. 25 in this week's Associated Press media poll and in the last two weeks have slipped 14 spots from the No. 11 perch they occupied after winning the Cayman Islands Classic. Now they'll face an 8-0 Mississippi State team, coached by former UCLA and Pitt coach Ben Howland, that's one of seven remaining unbeaten teams in the country. Of those seven, Mississippi State and Georgetown are the only two that aren't ranked. The Bulldogs received eight votes in this week's AP poll.
Mississippi State, which has played all of its games at home, ranks sixth nationally in blocked shots with 6.6 per game and has five players averaging in double figures, led by Tyson Carter at 14.0 points per game. The Bearcats and Bulldogs have had one common foe in Alabama State, which both schools beat handily, Mississippi State by a score of 86-68, UC by 83-51. Long-time UC fans might remember the Bulldogs as the team that beat the Bearcats in the Elite Eight in 1996 in Lexington, Ky., preventing them from making their seventh Final Four appearance.
One of the few bright spots in UC's last two games has been the play of junior point guard Cane Broome, who scored a team-high 15 points against Florida and 16 points against Xavier. Broome seems to be coming into his own as a scorer, which is what he was known for during his two years at Sacred Heart before he transferred to UC.
As a freshman at Sacred Heart, Broome averaged 14.5 points, which ranked eighth in the Northeast Conference. He shot 44.5 percent from the field, 75.2 percent from the free throw line and 33.8 percent from 3-point range.
It was a solid rookie year by almost any standard, but it offered no inkling of what was to come the following season. He worked tirelessly during the summer before his sophomore year with Sacred Heart alum Philip Gaetano, who was a grad assistant at the time and is now an assistant coach at Coppin State. When the 2015-16 season began, Broome was a different player - more polished, more aggressive, and a more prolific scorer.
He scored 27 points in the Pioneers' first game of the season against Quinnipiac and followed that with a 32-point performance in a loss to Yale. As the season continued, so did Broome's impressive numbers, culminating with a career-high 39 points vs. Fairleigh Dickinson at Feb. 20, 2016. He was 10-for-21 from the field, four-for-11 from long range, and made 15 of 22 free throws, with six rebounds, six assists and no turnovers in 38 minutes.
By then, the Hartford native had already begun entertaining thoughts of transferring to a higher-level program.
"It wasn't anything personal towards any of the coaches or anything like that," Broome said. "I knew I had to get better at some point. As a sophomore, I could probably not work out and still do the same thing. I didn't want to do that. There was nothing else I could really do in the league as far as personally. Most people try to get better their junior and senior year, but I did that my sophomore year."
Broome finished the 2015-16 season with a 23.1-point average, which ranked eighth nationally and led the NEC. He was named NEC Player of the Year, then underwent the recruiting process for the second time. He chose UC over Creighton, Miami (Fla.), Seton Hall and North Carolina State and sat out last year under the NCAA's rules for transfers.
At UC, he has found a different world from what he experienced at Sacred Heart. He travels on charter flights and stays in nice hotels on the road. There's a bigger tutoring staff, a better-equipped training room and a practice gym.
"Everything is different," he said. "(At Sacred Heart) we probably had two flights every two years. My sophomore year I flew to Chicago to play Northwestern, but other than that we were riding busses. Here we stay in a hotel before every game to get quality sleep. We didn't have that at Sacred Heart. You'd just go to your dorm and then get on a bus and go wherever you had to go."
During his first season at UC, Broome is averaging 10.4 points while shooting 53 percent from the field, 40.9 percent from 3-point range and 62.5 percent from the free throw line. He said he never expected to average 23 points for the Bearcats because his role is different from what it was at Sacred Heart, where he was more of a scoring point guard with a license to look for his own shot as frequently as he wanted.
"It was different to come here and try to get somebody else a shot, to run a play for somebody else and try to get to different spots," Broome said. "Offense used to be more like I bring it down, I'd get off screens and get open instead of me coming down and passing it. That's why I probably turn it over a few more times than I did."
UC assistant coach Darren Savino, who recruited Broome, said Broome has worked hard to fit into the Bearcats' offense and is making steady progress. But the transition hasn't been easy.
"We've asked him to do things that he hasn't done in his career, which would be play better defense and try to be more of a point guard than always putting his head down and trying to be a scorer," Savino said. "We want him to be aggressive and be a scorer, but he's had to adjust and get others more involved. And he's trying to do that. I think he's gotten better since the Cayman Islands (the week of Nov. 20.) That trip really helped him
"He's got to understand there's a time to be Cane and that is being ultra-fast and ultra-aggressive, getting to the basket and drawing contact. But there's also a time to enter the ball when it needs to be entered, initiate offense. That part is a learning process for him. We've had a lot of talks with him about it and he's getting better with it. It doesn't mean that we don't want him to be Cane, but when there's a time to get the ball to half-court and enter it to a spot, he needs to do it and take pride in doing it well."
The Bearcats needed some of the old Cane in their Dec. 2 loss to Xavier when they fell behind early and were having trouble scoring. Broome responded with 16 points, his second-highest total of the season. He scored 12 in the first half to help keep UC within shouting distance of the Musketeers and had five assists with two turnovers in 27 minutes.
"I feel like that made me more assertive," Broome said. "I feel more comfortable in who I am. It's hard to try to find yourself in the other games that we had because they were such blowouts. It was competition, but it wasn't like a game where you're going to face adversity. I'm not going to lie, the first couple of games I was still trying to figure out myself, but I feel like that game made me feel more comfortable."
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.