Cincinnati WBB Falls Short Against UConn

For the 21st time in 21 meetings, Cincinnati’s women’s basketball team lost to UConn.

After trailing 26-9 at the end of the first quarter, the Bearcats made an amazing comeback and trailed by 4 at halftime, outscoring UConn 22-9 in the second quarter.

After leading 35-31 at the half, UConn turned it on in the second half, leading to an ugly final score of 80-50. Still, the final score is not indicative of how hard and how well Cincinnati played for most of the game.

The issue with this Bearcats team is their lack of three point shooting. They don’t attempt many three, they are more of a mid-range team, so once this game started to slip away, it was going to be even harder to comeback. Cincinnati hit 3-11 from three, while UConn hit 10-24. UConn also outrebounded the Bearcats 47-28.

Antoinette Miller led the way with 19 points (16 in the first half). IImar’I Thomas, who leads the conference in scoring at just over 20 ppg, was held to just 12 points.

Bearcats have never beat UConn and have one more chance at history on Wednesday February 26, when the Huskies come to Fifth Third Arena for the final time. Last time these two schools met in Cincy, the Bearcats lost 65-55, their lowest margin of defeat in the series.

UConn has never lost an AAC game (111-0) and only two wins have been by single digits.

While losing by 30 points is never anything to brag about, the way this Cincinnati team played on Thursday shows the continued progress of this program, in year 2 under Michelle Clark-Heard.

Cincinnati is now 13-7 overall and 4-3 in AAC play. Their chances at an at-large NCAA Tournament bid (a realistic pre-season expectation) have mostly slipped away. Their RPI is currently 105.

Next up is USF at home on Sunday. Bulls came into the season, also, with Tournament expectations and are currently 13-8 and 5-2 in AAC play.