Tuesday Rundown

It's been pretty slow since Friday's disappointing loss. I only say disappointing because of the way it occurred. After seemingly being out of the game for most of Friday night, the Bearcats stormed back to take the lead with a few minutes left only to return to shooting themselves in the collective foot and limping to another tough loss.

Is this team on the bubble? In a word: no. Not right now at least. A few more losses in a row and things might get a little hot around here. But, you have to realize just how impossibly bad the bubble is right now. It's awful. A team with UC's resume (and it is pretty good all things considered) is not going to be left out. Now again, they still have some work to do. But, let's not get crazy. They don't have to sweep Connecticut and Notre Dame on the road this week. They don't even have to win four of five to get in. In my opinion 10-8 will securely get them in the tournament. Even 9-9 at this point is probably safe. But, I'm all for talking about seed improvements versus just getting in the dance. But, enough of that. There's still so much time left. At this point last season we were having the same conversation only to have them catch fire in March and making the sweet 16.

A couple interesting items came out yesterday. The first being the announcement that running back Jameel Poteat will be transferring from the football program. No word on where he'll end up, but it's always disappointing when a highly-touted player leaves the program. Poteat came in with a lot of fanfare but was stuck behind some pretty tough upper-classmen his first two years. And with UC bringing in a few more running backs in the most recent class, there is some kind of logjam at the position. Best of luck to Jameel.

Also (and perhaps more important) the story was posted on the Enquirer's page yesterday about expanding Nippert and all the details behind that project. Apparently they're targeting the start of the 2015 for the grand opening. What I really like about it is that UC is publicly making its push for the ACC or any other conference in the country that will have them. It's kind of funny to me that they're involved in negotiations with the Big East television contract, yet out the other side of their mouth continuing to push and push hard for the ACC. Hey, whatever works and gets UC into a much better position for all sports is fine with me. There has to be some smoke to this fire, right?

In case you haven't heard (and I'm sure you have) but UC's highest rated recruit Jermaine Lawrence has apparently suffered a wrist injury and will shut it down for the rest of the season. Knowing recruiting services (not named 247sports.com) Lawrence will drop to a 3-star and UC will be widely mocked for recruiting him so highly. OK so that's a little tongue-in-cheek but not so far-fetched when you consider ESPN dropped him from a 5-star to 4-star the week after he committed to UC. I'm sure that was a coincidence.

That's all for today. Sorry for pulling a "UC offense" and falling off the face of the Earth for a few days. Hopefully the team is ready to play Thursday night at UConn. They need to get back to their winning ways and very soon.