The Cincinnati Bearcats 2013-14 basketball schedule is starting to round into form. A day after it was announced that Cincinnati would be playing Pittsburgh in the Jimmy V Classic, Cincinnati has announced they are starting a home and home series with Nebraska. The series will start in Cincinnati. The date of the game has not been announced.

Nebraska brings some name value to the table, what with being Nebraska and all, but they don't bring success. They have finished under .500 the past two seasons. They lose two of their top three leading scorers. They lose the gigantic center that was one of the only noticeable things about Nebraska basketball last season.

Dan Hanner at Real GM ran his very early projections of the Big 10 and had Nebraska finishing last. His write up about them was:

Nebraska returns just 52% of its possessions from last year which should slow the momentum Tim Miles was building late in the season. JUCO transfers Leslee Smith and Deverell Biggs, Texas Tech transfer Terran Petteway, and Florida transfer Walter Pitchford should add some experience which might help a little. But none of them would start for a good team in the Big Ten. (Petteway had a hideous 75 ORtg in limited minutes for Texas Tech. I remember watching him two years ago and thinking that he had no idea what a good shot was. Perhaps that is correctable, but he was still dreadful.) Realistically, this is still the beginning of the rebuilding project. Tim Miles needs to give a lot of minutes to his young players next year and build for 2015-2016.

So that seems like a quality opponent. But hey, they all can't be winners. Especially since, as Chris of Bearcats Nation pointed out on twitter, San Diego State requested to postpone a trip to Cincinnati this year. A Big 10 opponent won't kill your RPI or anything like playing, I dunno, Mississippi Valley State would. The worst Big 10 team, 10-21 Penn State, ranked 140 on KenPom. The worst UC non-conference foe last season was ranked 344 of 347. Keeping teams that shitty off the schedule while teams like 180 SMU and 173 Houston join it are absolutely necessary. 

This is the second non-conference home game. UC also hosts NC State. The Bearcats play neutral site games with Pitt and X. They also finish up a home and home with New Mexico by visiting the Pit.

ESPN has announced the Jimmy V Classic participants for the 2013-14 season. The marquee game is between Florida and Memphis. The second game is the most important game to all of us, because it involves the Cincinnati Bearcats. The Bearcats will renew their hardwood rivalry with Pittsburgh December 17. I don't know if UC and Pitt are actual rivals, but in the sense of these teams play very close, often very good games against each other, the shoe fits. They don't have a silly trophy like this for basketball though.

Maybe this one time, this trophy should be used for basketball. Looking at the trophy again, no. It should never be used again.

This game will be on a Tuesday. The previous Saturday, December 14, is the Crosstown Shootout. We don't know the rest of the non-conference slate, but shit gets real in the middle of December. I like it. See you in MSG, Pitt.

The following piece was written by Stuart Gilchrist. Stuart has agreed to cover recruiting for Bearcats Blog. You can follow him on twitter @StewieGilchrist.

In the first three months after becoming the Head Coach at the University of Cincinnati, Tommy Tuberville and his staff were able to put together arguably one of the best classes in UC history. We were able to land the commitments of some high ranked JUCO players in Rodriguez Moore, Jarrell Jordan and Darren Dotson among other along with some highly ranked prep players in Travis Johnson, Tshumbi Johnson and Rasheen Jones. That class coming together in such a short time made many Bearcat fans including myself wonder what this staff could do with a whole year to recruit.

There are many questions that remain to be answered with the first full class of the Tuberville era. One would be what the impact of conference realignment will have on the staff as they try to get the pledges of the best players possible and that remains to be seen. Also, how the staff will go forward in who they offer and the types of players they will target to best fit their offensive and defensive schemes will come to light as this class takes shape. As we all know, Tommy T will be running a completely different offense than we were used to under the tenures of Brian Kelly and Butch Jones so we shouldn’t expect the same type players in all areas that the previous coaches recruited.

There are several needs that this staff needs to address for this class. The most glaring need is on the defensive line where there are 4 seniors and 3 juniors on the current roster leaving 6 underclassmen expected to fill those spots in the coming years. Another position of need is offensive line with 4 seniors and 4 juniors. Also, with the unexpected loss of Brent Stockstill to play under his dad at Middle Tennessee State, it would not hurt to add one quarterback to this class even though the Bearcats are loaded at QB.

So far in the recruiting class of 2014, Cincinnati has pulled in 7 commitments. 4 of those are commitments are on the defensive side and 3 are on the offensive. Tommy Tuberville and staff still seem to be working their connections to the south so far for this class and it is showing with 4 of the 7 commitments coming from Florida. This should be expected until the current staff can develop ties in the area to make a serious run at more local recruits. Hopefully the history that Tuberville has can start to stick on Midwest players and they will begin to come to Cincinnati to play for a storied coach but until this this staff will go anywhere to get the best players available to fit their needs.

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In news that is a little bit old but not completely, Cincinnati guard Sean Kilpatrick has been invited to the USA basketball World University Games training camp roster. It's a big honor for Kilpatrick as only 29 players were invited. The last Bearcat that was invited was Yancy Gates, who ultimately didn't make the team. Hopefully Kilpatrick has a better fate.

Kilpatrick is going to have some tough competition for the roster spot with guards like Joe Harris from Virginia, Kendall Williams from New Mexico, both guards from Notre Dame, Yogi Ferrell from IU, Bryce Cotton from PC, Andre Hollins from Minnesota, Quinn Cook from Duke and Markel Brown from Oklahoma State as just come of the competition. This is a great chance for Killa to test himself against some of the best college guards, and players, in the country for a solid week.

Tryouts are at the end of the month. The whole roster is as followed:

Last night, word came through on a North Texas message board, the most reliable source in the world, that Kelvin Gaines was in Denton visiting the school and things had gone well. This seems like a very solid situation for all involved.

UC has a scholarship crunch with more players than available scholarships. Kelvin Gaines has already graduated Cincinnati because he was an excellent student. That gives him the power to transfer out this season and immediately play his final two seasons. North Texas could use some big men because every school could use some big men. It comes across as a win, win, win.

Kelvin Gaines played 39 games in Cincinnati, averaging 0.6 points, 1.8 rebounds and 1 block in 7 minutes a game. He was 11-29 from the floor and 3-13 from the foul line. That'll be something for his next coaches to help him improve on. Kelvin blocked 23 and 15 shots his two seasons as a Bearcat. That's a skill that could really help in Conference USA. Yes, North Texas is in Conference USA. I had to look this up as well.

If this comes to fruition or if it doesn't, it seems that Kelvin Gaines is going to explore other options. That's well within his right. He wasn't going to get much run at Cincinnati, not with his lack of offense. He has rebounding and shot blocking skills that could help him on a little lower level. Best of luck to Kelvin wherever he ends up.