Three Man Weave: Bearcats Comeback Falls Short Against Clemson in Destructive 68-65 Loss

CINCINNATI — The Bearcats lost another wire-to-wire outing on Sunday, 68-65 to Clemson in Greenville, South Carolina. It got razor-thin down the stretch, but UC played another incomplete game to fall to 7-5 and serious panic early in the season.

Cincinnati trailed by as many as 27 in the first half, chipping away slowly throughout thanks to Day Day Thomas's (17 points, four rebounds) efforts. The offense in and outside Fifth Third Arena has not shown any signs of life against good teams, and it's looking like an anchor that will sink this team in Big 12 play.

UC shot 37.9% from the field and a solid 10-25 from three, but it never helped them get a lead all night after an early 6-9 blitzing from deep by Clemson, who committed few mistakes and shot 48% overall.

UC has five non-conference losses in one season for the first time in the Wes Miller era.

Fastbreak Storyline: Broken Offense, More Uneven Play

Cincinnati did a great job to come back in this game, no doubt, but to hold the expectations they have, you can never get in that spot to start with. Clemson shut them out in the first few minutes of the game and was up 25-3 at one point, completely humiliating this offensive plan.

Kerr Kriisa (zero points, -14 in nine minutes) and Shon Abaev (three points, two rebounds, ---17) have looked unplayable in high-stakes games so far this season, and that was the case again here. They logged a total of three minutes combined in the second half when UC won the frame 47-30.

They've been bad all season, but the rotation gets super short if you start having to cut their minutes. Overall, the whole offense is lost and may never find its way at this rate, ranking as one of the worst power conference units in the nation. Maybe some late-game magic got bottled by Moustapha Thiam (15 points, five rebounds) as he led the Bearcats back within one possession late in the game.

Alas, his offensive impact has been too few and far between this season as a young player. They need someone besides the UC player of the game to step up consistently, or the season will get darker and darker.

Baba Miller looked like a rising star against a terrible Alabama State team, and then posted another poor outing. Against good competition today (seven points, seven rebounds, three assists on 2-7 shooting).

He's combined for 44 points total in Cincinnati's five Q1/Q2/Q3 games this season.

Bearcats Player Of The Game: Day Day Thomas

Cincinnati's veteran guard came to play in a huge way as mentioned across the second half to at least keep things interesting. Thomas is the only sharpshooter on the team right now and smoked five threes through the twine on Sunday.

Thomas fed some nice fastbreak offense during the second half; they did win in large part because of Thomas. He hit the glass well in another way to impact the game. Amazingly, Cincinnati can't get any other players tomorrow impact games consistently like this. Miller fell completely back to earth in a two-field goal outing after going 11-12 against lowly Alabama State.

Thomas was the only Bearcat to hit 16-plus points and showed how far this horrendous offense has to go to get to his level of consistent outings. Even then, Thomas likely isn't great enough to lift them to Big 12 success, ranking 228th in offensive efficiency, joining Boston College as the only power-conference teams ranked outside the top 200 entering this loss.

The Bearcats have a week off before a 7 p.m. ET test against Lipscomb at home on Monday, Dec. 29.

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