The South Florida Bulls (USF) face off against the Cincinnati Bearcats tonight at 7 PM in the second round of the Big East Tournament. The Bearcats will likely be stiff competition for the Bulls, as last night’s victory was only the 10th for USF all season long.
To preview tonight’s game, the website Voodoo Five swapped a couple questions with the Bearcat sites Down the Drive and Bearcats Blog. Here’s what they had to say about tonight:
If USF wins on the offensive glass their probability of winning this game will be much, much higher. The problem is that UC is a great defensive rebounding team and though the Bulls are good in this respect. In fact you guys out rebounded UC in the last game 30 to 24. So they have to do that, Caesar Augustus Gilchrist obviously needs to have a big game. But the basic fact of the matter is that UC is just a better team than the Bulls, and by quite a large margin. When that is the case the three point shot is the great equalizer. Last night USF shot way above their heads. I don’t watch a ton of USF game but I am guessing the near 40 per cent shooting from down town is an outlier, one that needs to be repeated for USF to have a chance. If this team regresses to the mean shooting the three the odds go way down.
Also, one big players for the Bearcats tonight will likely be Yancy Gates:
Like most card carrying members of Bearcat Nation I was ready to write of the mercurial big man after his petulant run of form against Pitt, DePaul and Saint Johns. But the benching really seemed to light a fire under his ass. He has always had this kind of potential. And when he wants to play hard he is an absolute force inside in a league that is by and large bereft of quality interior big men. He absolutely dominated Xavier in the Crosstown Blowout earlier this year with 22 and 16, but there were games earlier in Big East play where he completely disappeared.
This should be a fun game, as USF hopes to build off their momentum from yesterday and to beat the Bearcats tonight. It will be a difficult challenge for the Bulls, but not impossible.