Four Factor Review: Cincinnati 69 Morehead State 61

Three Observations

-- The Bearcats actually shot the ball better from the field in the St. Francis game than they did last night (45.7 vs 37.3), but there is a reason for the advanced stats. The Bearcats offense was far more effective tonight than it was in the St. Francis game even with the lower raw percentage. Consider this, UC posted an offensive rating of 82.5 against the Red Flash, which would have tied last year's Xavier loss for the worst of the season. Last night UC posted an offensive rating of 107.8 which is right at last year's season average. That is a pretty good output on a bad shooting night for a team that is as historically offensively challenged as UC has been.

-- One of the biggest reasons for the Bearcats big boost in efficiency last night was the off the charts free throw rate. You have to go way back to last season's first Rutgers game to find anything that surpasses that mark. Two guys in particular stand out in this regard, Troy Caupain and Octavius Ellis. Between them they went to the stripe 24 times and made 18 of them. The rest of the team combined to go 4 for 10.

-- Farad Cobb is going to get a lot of attention for his performance last night, as well he should because he was the difference. But my read on things is that Cobb is going to have these kind of games with some regularity, but games like friday's where he just doesn't have it. Which is why I want to call attention to what Troy Caupain did last night. For the second game running Troy didn't have a good shooting night, but he did everything else well. He scored 13 points because he stayed aggressive and got to the line as mentioned above, but he also collected five rebounds, passed his way to 6 assists and had one turnover. He was a point guard in every respect, and the Bearcats are going to need that this season more than ever.