I’m considering last night’s score versus Illinois as a type of anomaly. Illinois might be the better team later in the season, but they lost a lot from the off-season. The same holds true thus far for the Hogs; they are not yet at their best, while growing fast. When I say Cincy looks to be the better team, I mean they seem to be closer to their optimized level, playing pretty darned good defense. I’m thinking their defense might be better than our offense, tonight.
However, I’ve been impressed with Cincy. I wonder why they weren’t ranked previously. Meaning, a Hog win tonight is probably quite insightful about the rest of the season.
Cincy is flying under the radar right now. They had a crazy season last year and got overlooked in the pre season polls. They had lots of covid problems last year (5 game cancellations). They started rough 3-7 (1-4).
Once healthy, they finished the regular season 7-3 / 7-2 (AAC) and went to the championship game of the tough All American Athletic Conference and lost to Houston. They also brought most of their team back this year. By all rights, they should be ranked, based on that data and their 5-0 record.
If we win the championship game tonight, it will be a very good win, but won’t help us in the polls as much as it would have if IIlinois had won their game. Last night Cincy was by far the best team in their win.
They will be the best defensive team we’ve seen. Several very quick guards but what may give us Big Time trouble is they have one of the best shot blockers in the country down low and two or three other big guys they bring in to spell him…we will have to move the ball really really well and hit the open shots.Hopefully we can break them down on defense and get into transition which is we’re at our best.
I can’t speak for The other guys but all I did is give my impression of Cincinnati don’t think you saw anywhere in there where I thought we would lose so I would hardly call that BS.
I don’t know about that. Illinois haD an ugly loss already this year and was on a downward slide. If they lose to k state tonight they’ll be long gone from the top 25, but it will makes our win vs kstate look better. A win vs cinci is as good an opportunity as we will have in our non conference schedule. Nobody we could beat in Kansas City Would get us ranked in the top 8. We are already ranked pretty high. We will have a chance to earn a 1 or 2 seed in conference play. A win tonight keeps us on the right path and borderline top ten ranking. Let’s go
I’m primarily referring to their defensive stats, which are very good; their strong performance against Illinois, and the “playing together” experience they have.
I was about to say our RPI is terrible, but apparently it jumped 179 places after last night. No idea how that’s possible. I’ll go with the eye test over any paper evaluations. From the eye test I’d say the hogs have been untested. We overcame some tough games to show that we are good, but don’t know how good yet. This should show us a lot more about how good we are tonight. I think we are going to take it to another level. I was as frustrated as anyone by our stand around and milk the clock offense last night but muss loves that crap. We have done just enough to win. Tonight we will have to really impress to pull off the W. I think we will. I don’t know about 75% sure though
