Last season Zach Harvey was a freshman for the Cincinnati Bearcats and he came in with a lot of hype. He was 49th ranked player in the 2019 class and that is after he reclassified, he was originally apart of the 2020 class. Cincinnati was able to beat out his home state Kansas for the top tier recruit. Getting Harvey was huge for John Brannen and staff during his first year with the program, Harvey had to wait for playing time behind a lot of tenured upperclassmen. What #BearcatNation didn’t know is he was coming off of ankle surgery before the season, so he was getting back in the flow of things during the season.
Towards the middle of the season the freshman started showing flashes on both sides of the floor. When Harvey is playing with flow it is easy to see he can score at all three levels (at the rim, mid range and from deep). What a lot of people might’ve overlooked is he was very good on defense as a freshman. He played in 26 games and averaged 1.8 points, never hitting double digits in any of his games last season. Fast forward to this season, he’s played in all 10 games and he is starting to carve out consistent playing time. The last four games he has really hit stride posting a stat line of 13.8 points, 2.5 rebounds on 65.5% from the field, 66.7% from three and 60% from the line. He was has earned AAC Weekly Honor Roll the previous week for the first time in his career.
It has been a rough season so far for the Bearcats, but a huge positive is getting to watch Harvey’s confidence grow on a nightly basis. Harvey stated,”I just want to do whatever to help my team win games.” when asked about his recent personal success. With 15 games left in the season hopefully he can keep up this current pace because his growth is essential to the programs success whether it be this year or next.
