Tweet me!The Cincinnati Bearcats were playing well. They had the number three team in the nation on the ropes, and the raucous Shoemaker Center crowd was on its feet, doing their best to force to the Syracuse Orangemen into a total collapse.
Then, in the blink of an eye, it all fell apart. The Bearcats scored just five points in the final 12 minutes of the game, and Syracuse finished the game on a 28-5 run to turn what was a very close game into a 71-54 win.
The Bearcats did a lot of things well on this day, attacking the glass and playing with enough passion to throw the Orange off their game. It just seemed that every time the Bearcats made a run, the Orange had an answer. Eventually, the Bearcats ran out of answers for the Orange attack.
The Bearcats somehow managed to go the final six minutes and four seconds of the game without scoring a single point. No field goals, no free throws -- nothing. Meanwhile, the Orange began to hit on all cylinders, totally overwhelming the underdog Bearcats.
"We had the game where we wanted it for 30 minutes, but they stepped up on the defensive end and we scored five points in the last twelve minutes," said Cronin. "You score 5 points in the last 12 minutes against Syracuse and you aren't going to win."
The Bearcats did get impressive performances from the trio of Lance Stephenson, Ibrahima Thomas, and Yancy Gates, but along with the rest of the team, those three went "MIA" down the stretch. Ibrahima Thomas led the team with 13 points, and collected seven rebounds, while Gates (11) and Stephenson (10) were the only other two Bearcats to reach double figures.
But because of the way the Bearcats finished the game, there weren't a lot of positive things to talk about. Bearcats' power forward Yancy Gates talked about his team's effort after the game, and tried to figure out exactly what went wrong.
"The defense wasn't good down the stretch," said Gates. "I don't know if it was fatigue or not, but it wasn't good. We also didn't get the rebounds we needed to. The defense needed to be tighter at the end of the game."
He continued,
"We were so eager to match every shot they made, that we would take a bad shot or try and make a play that wasn't there. We just needed to be more patient on the offense end."
With the loss, the Bearcats now find themselves at 5-6 in the Big East conference. Most believe the Bearcats need to finish at least at .500 in league play to have a shot at an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament, something that will without a doubt prove to be an extremely difficult task.
Still, senior Deonta Vaughn insists that the team isn't ready to give up yet
"We aren't worried about that right now," said Vaughn. "We know we have some winnable games ahead of us, and the Big East tournament ahead of us. We know what we need to do. We just have to not worry about what other people think of us as a team, and keep trying to get wins."
Mick Cronin somewhat echoed his senior guard's thoughts, saying despite the final score, there was a lot of good to be taken away from the loss.
"Of course I'm encouraged," said Cronin. "I'm not encouraged by the last six minutes, but we did a lot of good things."
The Bearcats have six days off now before traveling to Connecticut next Saturday, February 13th, for a noon matchup with the Huskies.
