It was the day that the Bearcats and fans have been looking to… Championship Sunday. The Cincinnati Bearcats looked to take the scary and dangerous Houston Cougars. The Bearcats earned wins against Wichita State and SMU to get into this position and looked to shock the world and earn a bid to the NCAA Tournament. The Bearcats ran out the same starters they did the last two games in Mike Saunders Jr, Mika Adams-Woods, Keith Williams, Jeremiah Davenport and Chris Vogt. Would the Bearcats be able to shock the world one more time?
The Bearcats started this game off slow as they did not make a basket for the first 3 minutes which allowed Houston to jump out to an early 6-0 lead. The Bearcats would fight back and forth with Houston, but just could not get any shots to go in the first half. the Bearcats fell behind 23-13 with 8:30 to go and the Bearcats could not get it back to single digits in the half. Jeremiah Davenport hit a couple of big threes, but outside of Davenport’s 11 the Bearcats did not have a shooter with more than five points. The Bearcats fought back to end the half going on a 7-0 run and cutting the lead to ten, but the 7-0 run was followed by a Marcus Sasser 4-0 run which had the Bearcats down at the half 41-27. The leading scorer of the half was Jeremiah Davenport with 11 points followed by Tari Eason with four points. The Bearcats were in foul trouble in the first half as Tari Eason had three, Chris Vogt had two and the Bearcats were without their two main bigs for a lot of the half. Would the Bearcats be able to make the comeback?
The Bearcats just could not match up against Houston as they were getting destroyed by Houston on the inside and had multiple turnovers against them. Houston is a very tough team and will likely get a 1 or 2 seed in the tournament. The Bearcats tried to get momentum and got a couple of threes from Mamoudou Diarra and a couple of small spurts on the offense, but just could not match up against Houston. The Bearcats didn’t score in over 3 minutes which helped Houston push the lead to 30. The Bearcats would only score three buckets in the final 7 minutes as the Bearcats would fall in this one 91-54. The Bearcats fought hard all season especially the second half and made a great effort to get to the Championship, but they just fell short. The Bearcats are a couple of pieces away from being back on top and the Bearcats will look to get back to the tournament next year. The Bearcats leading scorer was Jeremiah Davenport with 11 followed by Mamoudou Diarra with 10.
