Cincinnati is right back into the bubble picture

Does anyone know who that team that played Louisville was tonight?

I could have sworn it said Cincinnati on the jerseys, but this looked nothing like the Cincinnati team that lost three of their last four coming in. That one win, by the way, came by three against DePaul, as in 0-12-in-the-Big-East DePaul.

In a 63-54 win over Louisville in Cincinnati, the Bearcats played not only like a team competing for an NCAA Tournament bid, but one that deserves to dance.

"I told them, 'We're 19-6, we need to be proud of it, need to act like it,'" Cronin said. "We don't need to let anybody define us individually or as a group that's outside of our locker room."


His team responded, jumping out to leads of 18-8, 34-20, and 41-26 after Cashmere Wright scored on a teardrop over Terrence Jennings. But Louisville made their run, going on a quick 12-2 run to cut the lead to five. Cincy answered with a 9-2 run of their own, pushing the lead back to twelve and coasting to the win.

The difference in Cincinnati tonight isn't necessarily evident in the box score.

Yes, Wright scored 20 points for just the second time this season and Sean Kilpatrick added 18. But what won this game for Cronin's crew was their work on the defensive end. Louisville had 14 turnovers and just 11 assists. They grabbed just six of 28 available offensive rebounds. They shot just 4-17 from three, and while they hit 59.4% from two point range, the Cards were only able to get to the foul line seven times.

"We made some adjustments defensively to make our team more aggressive," Cronin said. "Our message to our team was if we had a high deflection total that we would win the game. The guys really bought into it and did a great job with our intensity on the defensive end. That was the difference in the game"

Some credit also has to be given to Yancy Gates.

The oft-maligned junior big man was suspended for the Bearcat's trip to Pitt and played limited minutes against both DePaul and St. John's. He came off the bench tonight, and while he only managed to produce eight points and six boards, he played with the energy and desire that Cincy coaches have been waiting to see from him.

"Yancy Gates had a big impact on the game with getting fouled. He had zero turnovers from a team that was trying to trap him a lot. We ran our offense through him most of the second half," Cronin said.

After losing to St. John's on Sunday, all the talk was that Cincy may have cost themselves a shot at an at-large bid.

That will change tomorrow.

With a 20 points win over Xavier (which looks more impressive with each passing game) and a win at St. John's to go along with tonight's victory, the Bearcats are right back into the mix.