Cincinnati Bearcats Basketball Storylines: Georgia State Panthers

CINCINNATI — Wes Miller's Cincinnati Bearcats team gets back in action on Friday night against the Georgia State Panthers. UC is expected to roll again like it did 94-63 against Western Carolina to open the season.

UC enters the game as 29.5-point betting favorites as of this writing in the second-ever meeting against GSU. The Clifton crew is ranked 33rd on KenPom, while GSU is 322nd out of 365 teams. ESPN's Matchup Predictor predicts Cincinnati will win 98% of the time.

These two schools played for the first time in the 2018 NCAA Tournament, and Friday is another chance for this new roster to keep gelling together.

"We've been working for this for like five months," UC center Moustapha Thiam said after Monday's win. "The time is here, we've just got to be ready to go. We go out there every night when the lights come on and just compete our a** off."

Sencire Harris Good To Go

The Bearcats got an early-season injury scare on Monday night when guard Sencire Harris only played nine minutes with a wrist ding, but he practiced on Thursday, and Miller said he will play on Friday night.

Harris had a major impact despite only playing nine minutes. He nabbed three steals and got up six free throws as he brought a ton of good energy to the floor.

This is great news for Cincinnati as it tries to find the best lineup combinations from an 11-man rotation that got run on Monday night. Harris has the talent to start or be a major sixth-man weapon as a bulldog defender.

"I don't have much of one other than it was a wrist thing," Miller said about Harris after Monday's. "Happened in the first half when he went to the rim and tried to jam it. We recruited him because I think the way that he plays the game, the way that he competes, is something that our staff and I completely identify with. And then I feel like our fans, this community, are going to identify with the way that he approaches it. He's a very, very key piece to this team. And you know, we need him. We need him to be healthy, because he's going to be very important to the things that we're trying to do."

Key piece is right, expect Harris to have a big impact on UC's first real test this Tuesday against Dayton. The Flyers are 1-0 and currently ranked 47th on KenPom.

Pushing the Pace

The Bearcats rattled off 80 possessions on Monday night with a purpose. Miller wants this to be the fastest-paced team he's ever had and even the fastest-paced in the nation.

He declared that at his radio show on Thursday night, and UC started on the right foot toward that goal. UC had the nation's seventh-fastest average possession length on offense through one game. It's only one game, but you could tell the whole rotation was looking to run a lot more than prior renditions.

The roster was built in this image, and that continuity between talent hunting and identity could take UC's normally mediocre offenses out of the mud. They need to cut down the 15 turnovers from the opener, but that is fixable as the speedy talents get more time together.

A fast offense with little defensive drop-off could be a winning formula this season. The game tips off at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN+.

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