Bearcats Add Nebraska To Non-Conference Basketball Schedule

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.
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