TicketsHow many games did you think the Bearcats would win in the regular season?
Ten? Maybe they'd split the two games in Indiana. Perhaps they'd lose both. Or perhaps they'd get tripped up in that mid-October to mid-November lull in the schedule, overlooking a spunky Tulane or Navy. Maybe UCF would get dreaded payback, knocking UC out of the conference title picture early.
How about 11 wins? Maybe they'd handle business up and down the schedule but fail to come away with a victory against a top-10 Notre Dame team. There's nothing wrong with 11 wins, after all. It's something the Bearcats have done just four times in their history.
Or maybe you knew they'd win 'em all. It's a testament to this team that it had a sizable portion of Cincinnati—a group that tends to keep its defenses up—ready to believe from the outset.
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That belief proved to be well-founded. The Bearcats ran the gauntlet for the second consecutive year, joining the 2009 team as the only to go 12-0. That's hard to do. Only one other team (Georgia) managed to pull it off, while many of the country's most vaunted programs (Ohio State, Oregon, Oklahoma, Texas A&M, and Clemson) lost multiple times. Add in Iowa State and North Carolina—who started the season in the AP Poll's top ten—and the list of teams that saw playoff hopes vanquished grows.
The Bearcats are flying in rarefied air, and they're doing it with relative ease, something for which they haven't gotten enough praise. ESPN created a stat called "Game Control." In short, it calculates a team's average win probability across every single play of the season, using this data to make a judgment on how well each team has dominated their games. Win-loss records are clear, but Game Control reads deeper, rewarding teams who play large stretches of their season where the victory is never in doubt. In this Game Control metric, your Bearcats rank 5th in the nation, trailing only the three other teams in the playoff picture and Ohio State. These Bearcats are not easing past opponents like you may have been led to believe.
We saw it Saturday. At the end of the first quarter, with ECU leading by a field goal, Cincinnati's win probability was 73.2%. But then Desmond Ridder's offense got to work, spreading the ball all over the yard, racking up three quick touchdowns, and removing any possible Black Friday intrigue. Ten minutes into that second quarter, UC's win probability was north of 97%, never falling below 92.9% the rest of the night.
A tradition unlike any other…
— Cincinnati Football (@GoBearcatsFB) November 27, 2021
𝗕𝗥𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗜𝗧 𝗛𝗢𝗠𝗘 @COACHFICK‼️#Bearcats pic.twitter.com/c5u6AOtJQr
Of course, this can be deceptive. Analytics are great but rarely tell the whole story.
Take this for example: ESPN's Football Power Index tells us Cincinnati has an 82.6% chance to beat #24 Houston on Saturday, meaning it's not UC's most challenging game of the season. That's wrong. It's going to be a cage match. Saturday's AAC Championship is going to be the Bearcats' toughest test. Houston is good and led by a coach who has been in big moments. Everything is at stake for UC, while the Cougars are looking to turn an 0-1 start into their best season since 2015, and would not only earn a big trophy with a victory but likely a New Years Six Bowl berth as well.
Can the Bearcats win their second consecutive conference championship? Can they become the winningest team in UC history before bowl season even arrives? Can they turn a Sunday into one of the most anticipated, anxious days in UC football history?
All the chips are on the table. Saturday has the makings of a classic. See you at Nippert.
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