TicketsNo.10/10 CINCINNATI (26-4, 15-2) at No. 11/11 WICHITA STATE (24-5, 14-3)
SERIES INFO: 31st meeting; Cincinnati leads 18-12 overall; Wichita State leads 8-7 in Wichita, Kan.
Cincinnati leads 11-4 in Cincinnati
LAST MEETING: Wichita State won 76-72 on Feb. 18, 2018 at BB& T Arena in Highland Heights, Ky.
STREAK: Wichita State - 2
COACHES: Mick Cronin is in his 12th season at Cincinnati (263-139); 15th season overall (332-163)
Gregg Marshall is in his 11th season at Wichita State (285-95); 20th season overall (479-178)
AP/USA TODAY RANKINGS (FEB. 26): Cincinnati (10/10); Wichita State (11/11)
RADIO: 700 WLW; Dan Hoard provides play-by-play with color analyst Terry Nelson
TV: CBS; Andrew Catalon provides play-by-play with color analyst Steve Lappas
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GoBearcats.com
The powers that be in the American Athletic Conference knew what they were doing when they scheduled the showdown between the University of Cincinnati and Wichita State on the final day of the regular season.
The 10th-ranked Bearcats will take on the 11th-ranked Shockers at Charles Koch Arena in Wichita at noon Sunday in a rematch after Wichita State's 76-72 win over UC on Feb. 18 at BB&T Arena. UC, the preseason favorite by one vote to win the league, is in the enviable position of having already clinched a share of the regular-season championship by virtue of its 78-49 blowout at Tulane on Thursday night.
"It's hard to win a conference," UC coach Mick Cronin on his postgame radio show after the game. "So for us it's something that we're extremely proud of and we don't take it lightly."
On the same night, the Shockers – playing their first season in the AAC after leaving the Missouri Valley Conference - needed overtime to get past Central Florida, 75-71, in Orlando. Now the the top two teams in the league will meet to find out if the American will have an undisputed champion in UC or if the Bearcats will have to share the title with Wichita State. If the Shockers win, they'll have the No. 1 seed in next week's AAC Tournament in Orlando by virtue of having swept both games from UC this season.
Whatever happens, it will be the second time in the last five years that UC has won at least a share of the title. The Bearcats were co-champs with Louisville in 2014.
Cronin called Sunday's meeting "a monster game."
"Our focus immediately turned to trying to find a way to win this game Sunday for a lot of reasons," Cronin said. "You don't want to lose to the same team twice. You want to win the championship outright, and if you can beat a team of their caliber on the road what that does for your RPI, what that does for your (NCAA Tournament) seeding."
UC (26-4 overall, 15-2 in the league) has won three in a row since that loss to Wichita State. The Shockers (24-5, 14-3) have won seven in a row since an 81-79 overtime loss at Temple on Feb. 1.
Included among those wins was the victory over UC that ended the Bearcats' 39-game home winning streak, which was then the longest in the country. Jarron Cumberland led UC in that game with 18 points, followed by Jacob Evans III with 16, Cane Broome with 16 and Gary Clark with 11 points and eight rebounds.
The Bearcats trailed for all but 4:26 against the Shockers, were down by 11 points twice, and by six with two minutes left. They scrapped back to get within two points with 14 seconds remaining and again with eight seconds to play, but twice allowed the Shockers to throw long passes over their defense for a layup and a dunk.
After the game, Cronin lamented his team's unwillingness to do the "uncomfortable things that go into winning."
"We're not in a good place for a lot of reasons," he said then. "We've lost focus of why we had been winning a lot of games, which is defense and rebounding. We've got too many guys that are concerned with the offensive end. We'd better get back to realizing what makes a team a good team - unselfish play, toughness, defending and rebounding."
The Bearcats are in a much better place now after wins over UConn and Tulsa at home and the romp over Tulane on Thursday. Evans, the Bearcats' leading scorer for the season, did not play in the second half of the Tulane game after twisting his left ankle with just over eight minutes to play in the first half. The UC coach indicated after the game that the injury did not appear to be serious.
With Evans out, Cronin used a lineup with Broome and Justin Jenifer, his two junior point guards playing, playing together. The UC coach liked what he saw. Broome has averaged 14.2 points over his last four games while shooting 71.0 percent from the field and 63.6 percent from 3-point range.
"It's something that we've got to continue to possibly look at more as time goes," Cronin said, "especially as well as Cane is playing right now, if we really need to use our speed and quickness and get after people. Those two guys at the front of the pressure can really cause a lot of problems in the backcourt."
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.