Three Man Weave: Cincinnati Avenges First 2025 Game Against Baylor With Home Win

CINCINNATI — The Bearcats lived to fight another day for their at-large NCAA Tournament lives in a 69-67 win over Baylor for a huge Quad 1 win at home.

Jizzle James (18 points, one rebound) led all scorers and hit enough triples to get one of the biggest wins of the Wes Miller era. Cincinnati lost the rebounding battle 31-28 but answered with a 9-4 free-throw advantage to keep another greatBig 12 free-throw shooting team from major impact.

The win marked Cincinnati's first all-time win over Baylor, moving to 1-4 in team history.

James Sparks Three-Point Showing

Cincinnati got Simas Lukošius (seven points, two assists) back on Tuesday night, and he helped spark a much stronger three-point outing for UC. The team drilled 10-23 threes after making just 11 combined over the past three games.

Lukošius hit two of those and James led the outside shooting with a 3-8 mark. James continues to show he's at his best when taking that outside jumper or attacking the rim, with some strong looks from the corners and a 3-4 free throw mark tonight. He wasn't uber-efficient, shooting just 6-20 from the floor, but he hit big shots when needed and kept owning the mantle of UC's go-to offensive option.

The Lithuanian's gravity was much needed across his 17 minutes on Tuesday. Cincinnati didn't destroy the paint (24-18), but they kept Baylor spread out enough to find open looks and create enough trips to the foul line (14 FT attempts). The outing was encapsulated by a massive triple from Day Day Thomas in the final minutes to salvage a rough shooting night by him (3-8 on FGs). He also grabbed the game-sealing rebound.

Needed it, and got it to notch the second Quad 1 win home win of the Wes Miller era as of this writing.

Reed Stays Rollin

Josh Reed (11 points, four rebounds) continues to be a huge connecting piece for this team as he added another solid outing to his red-hot ledger of late. He hit all four shots in the first half and played continued awesome man-to-man defense to slow down one of the 15 most efficient offenses in the country.

All in all, he posted a 16-efficiency mark and kept justifying his role in the starting lineup. Only Dillon Mitchell (22 efficiency on 13 points and nine rebounds) played much better than Reed. Reed has been the biggest story for the Cats' this month, alongside James's scoring rise.

Those two boosts have brought Cincinnati back onto the NCAA Tournament bubble ahead of the most daunting foe of the Wes Miller era in No. 4 Houston. Reed continues to set top career minute marks (a career-high 33 on Tuesday) in each recent game, showing his stellar development in this program as a junior, along with being a feather in the cap of this coaching staff.

They've done a great job of steadily building his game and confidence to make him ready for these moments. In the end, it's up to the player to seize that and the 6-7 wing has done just that to make sure Cincinnati's season doesn't slip away easily down the stretch.

Edgecombe Contained...For A Half

Cincinnati continues to play great man-to-man defense over the past three games. Future NBA lottery pick V.J. Edgecombe (18 points, 14 in the second half) felt that heavily on Tuesday as UC kept him from getting open looks from outside and did a nice job driving the ball away from him in the half-court.

Edgecombe shot just 1-3 from the field in the first half, but his 38% mark from deep in conference play really got felt in the final 20 minutes (4-6 from deep in the second half). He helped will the Bears back from a 13-point deficit with some nasty triples.

Baylor doesn't live and die by big outings from the freshman, but with Jayden Nunn (sickness) fighting through illness on Saturday, the Bears didn't have many other go-to perimeter options to pick up the slack. That was a major factor for UC's defense and a gameplan nugget from a Bearcats team that's let strong scorers scorch them a few too many times in the past few seasons. They did just enough against Edgecombe in the opening frame to win.

Norchad Omier (15 points, 10 rebounds) did get rolling, especially with 11 second-half points, but UC was able to weather that storm from the forward and set up another massive conference game at No. 4 Houston on Saturday at 4:30 p.m. ET on CBS.

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