The Bearcats were 65-59 winners over IPFWTF this afternoon. Sean Kilpatrick came off the bench with 13 points. Yancy Gates had 13-7, and Ibrahima Thomas threw up 9-9. Rashard Bishop had 11 points, but more importantly was 6-6 at the free throw line. He iced the game. Dion Dixon, my best friend, had 10 points. Cashmere Wright added 8-4 assists-4 steals-2 turnovers.

 The Bearcats raced out to a 13 point halftime lead. The Bearcats stuttered on offense to start the second half yet again. The Dons went to a 3-2 zone to take away the inside game, and that lead to UC shooting 12 threes. Of course, they can't shoot 3s, and made only 1. The one was important, as Sean Kilpatrick made it a 9 point game. The Bearcats score 10 points in the first 13 minutes plus. Just another putrid effort on the offensive end. The Bearcats also shot free throws at an extremely poor rate, going 16-29. Ugh. The Bearcats also had 15 turnovers. Just not a good half. The Bearcats reload and play Monday night. Hopefully Mick Cronin works on halftime adjustments for whoever they play then. But, 2-0 is 2-0, and 2-0 tastes good. 

Tomorrow at 1 pm the Bearcats play host to IPFW. They are called the Mastodons. That's pretty bad ass. We covered where you could catch the game on tv yesterday, and you can always hear it on the radio. I don't have much more to add about this preview, so let's get to the stats and the fun stuff. 

Record: 1-0

Points

1. Sean Kilpatrick 21
2. Yancy Gates 15
3. Ibrahima Thomas 9
4. Rashard Bishop 8
5. 4 tied with 3

Rebounds

1. Yancy Gates 10
2. Dion Dixon 6
3. Justin Jackson 4
4. Three tied with 3

Assists

1. Cashmere Wright 4
2. Yancy Gates 2
3. Justin Jackson 2

Steals

1. Cashmere Wright 3
2. Justin Jackson 3
3. Rashard Bishop 2
4. Dion Dixon 2
5. Sean Kilpatrick 2

Blocks

1. Justin Jackson 2
2. Yancy Gates 1
3. Dion Dixon 1

Record: 1-1

Points

1. Zach Plackemeier 14.5
2. Frank Gaines 12
3. Ben Botts 10
4. Trey McCorkle 9.5
5. Jeremy Mixon 9

Rebounds

1. John Peckinpaugh 7
2. Frank Gaines 5.5
3. Zach Plackemeier 5

Assists

1. Zach Plackemeier 3.5
2. John Peckinpaugh 3.5

Bad Ass logos

1. 1

The Mastodons won at SIU-Edwardsville, and took Xavier to overtime on Tuesday night, before losing. Ken Pom is not very high on IPFW, and has UC winning by 15. I can't really go against that. Xavier got up early and seemed to coast. Plus, I don't really think that the Muskies have found their sea legs yet. They have Holloway, and I'm not sure they know what. IPFW hit 10 triples in that game, so that's going to be a focus for the Bearcats defense. To make this seem more official, let's do bullet points. 

• IPFW hit 10 3s against Xavier. No duh because I just said that. The Bearcats have to close out. Case closed. 
• The UC guards did jack and shit against the team they played Monday. Yes, I already forgot. Cash, and Dion Dixon, my best friend, had good secondary numbers, but they need to get the ball in the basket. 
• Yancy Gates needs to get inside, and play back to the basket. I don't care if he was a good jump shooter in high school. He needs to take advantage inside. 

Cincinnati hosts Rutgers tomorrow night at 7:30 on the Big East Network. The game is also available on ESPN3.com. The Bearcats come in 3-6, but they haven't lost to Rutgers since 2005. The Bearcats ruined Rutgers undefeated season, had narrow wins in 07 and 08, and blew the doors off the Scarlet Knights in the season opener last year. Rutgers is 4-5, and their chances of getting in a bowl game rely on winning tomorrow. Let's get into it. 

Uc and Rutgers play tomorrow, so what better way to get to know about the Scarlet Knights than talking to someone who blogs about them? I can't think of a better way either. There will still be a preview of the game coming later, and then there will be a preview of the basketball game. You are going to be blown away with coverage on things that are going to happen. Let's get to the talk I had with On the Banks. I answered some questions over there as well, so hit the link. 

It's the middle of November, and what better time to scour the internet to look for stories relating to the Cincinnati Bearcats? I can think of none. If you haven't seen this article before, we have football news, basketball news, and Big East stories from all my friends who run other Big East sites. One huge piece of news before we hit the stories. My birthday is Tuesday. I expect the most decadent of presents and well wishes. Maybe you, my fine readers, can throw me a parade. I'm waiting. So are the stories. 

Football

 Zach Collaros was interviewed in this piece on NJ.com about how Cincinnati can score, but not win. Obviously the dude at NJ.com hasn't watched the last 2 games where UC didn't score. Collaros offered this quote, “It has been hard to deal with everything going on. There’s a lot of negativity from outside the program right now. But the season isn’t done and neither are we.” That's good to hear, but at the same time, I'll believe it when I see it. OMG that's the negatively he was talking about. Oops. #teammule

In other Rutgers news, starting running back Joe Martinek is expected back. He was out for the Syracuse game, but Jeremy Deering filled in nicely while running the wildcat. Mohamed Sanu left the game in the second half, but he's expected to battle through his injured leg and play. Martinek isn't great, but Sanu is really all the Rutgers offense has. 

Bill Koch touches on something that I've been writing about for nearly the whole season, UC has gotten nothing from their special teams return game. Koch writes that Jones thought Vidal Hazelton, Darrin Williams and DJ Woods could handle the load kick return wise, but Hazelton tore his ACL, Williams hurt his ankle against Oklahoma and is out for the season, and Woods isn't good at returning kicks. Jones said that Woods was the only guy he wanted returning punts for some idiotic reason. DJ has been worse returning punts than he has been returning kicks. Plus, he's fumbled at least 2 of them. I wouldn't mind seeing someone else get a crack. We've see Anthony McClung in spot duty on kicks, but I'd like to see him do it full time. 

Koch also wrote about how much the defense sucks. He tries to get the parallel going with the terrible 05 team, and how that matured into the Orange Bowl team, but I'm not sure. The talent was there on that team. The talent isn't there on this team. Butch Jones needs to get out there and recruit on defense. Especially safeties and linemen. Jones said that Cincinnati will do what Bob Huggins did for hoops in the 90s, dip into the JUCO ranks to fill some holes. Can't be the worst plan I've ever heard. 

Brett McMuprhy released the list of the college programs that spent the most on football. Tops on the list was Ohio State. Alabama, Notre Dame, Auburn and Texas round out the top 5. The top spending Big East team is Rutgers, who is 15th. Cincinnati is dead last in the Big East, spending $11.59, which is 63rd. That's in actual dollars, not millions. 

Some brilliant reader with too much time on his hands over at Voodoo 5 broke down every team's chance to win the Big East. Obviously someone like Pitt's chances are clear cut, win and you are in. Cincinnati has a chance to win the conference, and it's this exact scenario. 

Cincy beats Rutgers, UConn beats Syracuse, Louisville beats West Virginia, Pitt beats USF, Rutgers beats Louisville, WVU beats Pitt, Cincy beats UConn and Pitt, UConn beats USF, Rutgers beats WVU.

Sounds like it's doable. Then again, there are no scenarios in the Big East that sound outrageous since no one wants to win the conference. Just imagine a 6-6 Cincinnati team playing Nebraska in the Fiesta Bowl. ESPN will love it!

Basketball

If you wanted to watch the Bearcats on TV before heading over to the game Saturday night, too bad. Apparently the FSN contract with the Big 12 can not be broken and the Bearcats will play on the alternate version of FSN. I have no idea what that is, so just check every FSN on your cable box. The game might be online, I'm not sure. I'll look it up before I write the game preview tomorrow. But yeah, this is kind of a bummer for someone who was interested in this game, even just a little bit because IPFWTF took Xavier to overtime Tuesday night. I guess them's the breaks. 

The reason that TV is such a big deal is that only 4,083 showed up to the season opener Monday night. That made part of my soul cry. UC had 6,777 last season. The lowest they've had in the Mick era were 6,199 two years ago. PATHETIC. Cincinnati basketball fans are the worst. We are going to get outdrawn by fucking DePaul this season, and it's because all of you bandwagon fucks out there. Thanks for letting UC's program fall like this. 

In better news that apparently only 4,083 of us care about, Jeremiah Davis has joined the UC recruiting class for next season. That's the #21 ranked recruiting class to you. It's taken him a while to rehab the program, but Mick is finally starting to get players to come to UC. Lance Stephenson helped from an image standpoint if nothing else. 

Sport that goes unmentioned

The sport that goes unmentioned since they stopped following me on twitter and UC won't let me interview any of their players, has won the Big East outright. Congratulations to them. They play tomorrow at 12:30 in the quarterfinals. I'm sure I won't write about it because they are the worst. You write about how great they are, and they spit in your face and laugh at you. What a bunch of bias. 

Around the Big East

My good friend Sean at Nunes Magician has a round of Syracuse related links as they play their last Big East game of the season. Sadly I wasn't mentioned. Mainly because I don't write about Syracuse. Maybe next time. 

Our good, good friends over at Card Chronicle list the 10 best West Virginia-Louisville games. 

The Smoking Musket has their normal round up of West Virginia links. 

I'm tired of saying our friends, so I'll stop. But our compadres at Voodoo 5 had a great look at the Lindsey Lamar kick return TD. It's quality. 

On the Banks has an article up that UC fans should read, the upside of what it's like having an average coach. We've not had one in a while, what with Mark D'Antonio being all awesome at Michigan State and the last two seasons with Brian Kelly. His point of having a coach that will stay instead of a BK or D'Antonio is a good one. 

Our Bloguin buddies at Pitt Script wrote about the 2011 Pitt recruiting class. Also, Greg Romeus is out of the season if you didn't know.

The UConn Blog has been taken over by hoops coverage since the Huskies have been in action, and they have a good write up of Kemba Walker's 42 last night. They also have a picture of a dude on Vermont with an amazing mustache. 

That is that with the links. Tomorrow will bring 2 game previews for the games on Saturday. That means Monday will be double write ups. That already sounds like a good time. Thanks for reading everyone. If you have links you want to share, or comments, write a comment here or on twitter and I'll respond. I'm nothing if not a man of the people.