10-point gap no big deal for Bearcats
Cincinnati roars back to raise record to 4-0 in league.
Down 10 TAMPA, FLA. — points on the road, No. 14 Cincinnati hardly blinked.
“There was no panic. I’m very confident with these guys,” coach Mick Cronin said after Jarron Cumberland scored 18 points and the Bearcats shrugged off a slow start to beat struggling South Florida 78-55 on Saturday night.
“They’re easy to talk to because we have guys that know why you win, they know how to win,” Cronin added. “So, you can get them focused. They know it’s not the answer to play hero ball, it’s to play team ball.”
Jacob Evans III had 16 points and Kyle Washing- ton added 14 to help the Bearcats (15-2, 4-0) remain unbeaten in the American Athletic Conference.
The victory was the eighth straight for Cincin- nati, which shot 70 percent (14 of 20) while outscoring the Bulls 43-22 in the second half.
USF (7-11, 0-5) has lost six in a row, remaining winless in the AAC, where it has been beaten by an average of nearly 25 points per game.
“We showed a tremen- dous amount of composure on a night when things could have gone wrong,” Cronin said. “To win this game by 23 points, I’m really impressed with our players.”
Payton Banks led the Bulls with 22 points, though former Dayton coach Brian Gregory was quick to note that his leading scorer, back in the lineup after missing three of the previous four games with an illness, finished with zero rebounds.
“You can’t play 29 minutes and not have a rebound,” Gregory said, noting the 6-foot-6 graduate transfer from Penn State is capable of giving the Bulls more.
Cincinnati closed the opening half on a 24-12 run, turning a 10-point deficit into a 35-33 lead. That was as close as the score would be the rest of the way, with the Bearcats methodically building-a-double-digit lead of their own.
“We stayed composed,” said Cumberland, who made seven of 11 shots, includ- ing four of seven 3-point attempts. “We’re not always going to be up in a game. Just stay composed and keep playing our game, that’s what we did.”
USF shot 57 percent in the first half, including four of five 3-pointers, but was outscored 17-5 from the foul line. The Bulls missed 11 of their first 16 shots coming out of the break and trailed by as many as 24 down the stretch.
“I was pleased with our competiveness for the first 22 minutes,” Gregory said. “I was disappointed with the way we finished the game.”