Cincinnati Bearcats Basketball 2025-26 Storylines: @ No. 10 Houston

CINCINNATI — The Bogeyman is next up on the schedule for Wes Miller and the Bearcats basketball team. No. 10 Houston awaits Cincinnati at noon Saturday on its latest road trip in the Big 12.

Kelvin Sampson's team has won 10 consecutive games in this series, dominating the Bearcats across the end of their time in the AAC and beginning of Big 12 life.

"I think their first three years, they've lost four games in the best conference in the country. We've been in a lot of close games. It's certainly more difficult on the road," Miller said about the challenge during his weekly 700 WLW radio show.

Cincinnati enters the game with a 7.4% chance to win the game on ESPN's Matchup Predictor and is ranked 58th on KenPom, while Houston is sixth. UC is also 74th in the NET Rankings with a 2-9 record in Quad 1/2 games so far this season.

Fastbreak Storyline: Shotmaking Has To Improve

The Bearcats got another tally in the win column against Baylor on Wednesday night, 67-57, but the offense continues to be so far away from competing with true top 10 teams.

Iowa State was playing more like a top 25 team than a top two team when the Bearcats posted their best offensive game of the season against the Cyclones (136 adjusted offensive rating, 17 points higher than any other game this season). They will have to play just as efficiently, if not more so, to beat the Cougars on their home floor.

Cincinnati is last in the Big 12 in field goal percentage (41.2% in conference play) and three-point percentage (26.2%). If those numbers stay relatively the same on Saturday, they will get beaten by double digits. Moustapha Thiam has gone 13-26 from the floor in the past two games, and they'll need as good a mark or better from him in Texas.

“Just being in the gym working on it with the managers," Thiam said about his shooting. "They have been doing a great job hyping us up. I think I just need to be working on it and trusting myself and when the right time comes, whenever my teammates find me, I’ll just let it go.”

Houston is still led by a top guard duo in Kingston Flemings (17.5 points, 5.4 assists) and Emmanuel Sharp (16.5 points, 2.9 rebounds). The latter was terrible against UC earlier this month, while Flemings was lights out and has been for most of the season. He's scored 89 points in the past three games, ripping through defenses on an absolute heater (19 points and six assists against UC in the first matchup).

The ninth-ranked Houston defense on KenPom lays out as a brutal matchup for UC's 217th-ranked offense. UC cannot blow easy looks at the rim when they rarely arrive and have to carry over their strong free-throw shooting from last game into Houston (11-14 on Wednesday). They just simply won't have many possessions to overcome the long string of misses that inevitably comes against this defense.

Houston has always dictated the pace in this matchup, so expect a slow, drawn-out game with the winning score in the high 60s or low 70s. The Cougars rank 338th in adjusted tempo, while UC started the season playing fast but is now in the middle of the nation at 129th in adjusted tempo.

Taking care of the ball is massive here as well against a Cougar team forcing 13.7 turnovers per game in conference play and committing 6.9 (both rank first in the Big 12). This team limits possessions, creates even more possession stress with turnovers, and limits even more with great rebounding (29.7 rebounds allowed per conference game, third). They are just as good as UC on defense, while winning on the margins on offense in all the ways UC wanted to this season.

The Bearcats will have to either shoot much better than they have all season, or beat the Cougars by crushing all the other non-shooting stats I've just broken down. Teams are only taking 51.6 shots per game against Houston in conference play (first in the Big 12).

A rock and a hard place, big reasons why Houston's won 10 consecutive games in this series. Catch the clash on FOX Saturday at noon ET.

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