Three Man Weave: Cincinnati Bearcats Basketball Rips Apart Oklahoma State At Home

CINCINNATI — The Bearcats destroyed Oklahoma State on the hardwood Saturday, 91-68 to keep their outside NCAA Tournament hopes alive this season.

The Bearcats posted arguably their most dominant win of the season to help make the Quad 3 outing as beneficial as possible. Day Day Thomas (26 points, 7-11 from deep) was part of a three-point barrage out of Cincinnati (14-34 from deep). Moustapha Thiam added 24 points and 15 rebounds for another great outing.

OSU shot just 40.7% against the great UC defense and turned it over 14 times.

The Bearcats are now 16-13 on the season with two games left until the 2026 Big 12 Tournament. They likely need 21 wins to have a clear case to make the NCAA Tournament. Oklahoma State had won five of the previous eight meetings between the two sides, with the Bearcats now holding a 3-1 lead in games played in Cincinnati.

Ripping Twine From Outside

The Bearcats entered this game 264th in outside shooting on the season and flipped that number on its head against the Cowboys (41.2%).

OSU has the worst scoring defense in the Big 12, and it flared up massively with tons of open outside shots for Cincinnati. The Bearcats found clean look after clean look to keep stamping home what's been a steady offensive improvement over the past month.

Texas Tech shut down this offense, but things clicked right back into place at home. Cowboy big man Parsa Fallah, unfortunately, tore an ACL earlier this week and is out for the season. He seemingly took all the wild west weaponry, leading scorer Anthony Roy was a no-show against UC's hounding man-to-man defense, and no other Cowboy stepped up to fill either void for what is arguably the worst team in the conference right now.

That scoring and size absence was glaring. UC cooked on the glass, winning the rebounding battle by 11.

UC handled business how it's supposed to and closes the season with a primetime matchup against BYU this week and TCU on the road next weekend. This palate cleanser came at the perfect time to get them ready for those battles. UC's head coach Wes Miller has seemingly found a smaller lineup he wants to trust down the stretch here. Largely, seven players got the most run for their team in this game, including just six with 15 plus minutes.

It's a big difference from his larger rotations throughout seasons in years past. Shon Abaev returned from his month-plus injury to get some run, but he's still far from that go-to group just yet. Getting him to add a little bench magic in the final two weeks of the Big 12 season could be crucial to UC pulling off a miracle.

They entered this game with a 1% chance to make the NCAA Tournament on JThom Analytics.

Bearcats Player of the Game: Day Day Thomas

The veteran guard's been shooting terribly lately, but that flipped in a big way on Saturday. Thomas shot 7-12 overall and hit seven shots from deep for his best shooting outing of the season.

Getting UC's guards to more consistently can triple is huge to the ultimate season goal, and Thomas is trying to spark that in this final stretch. He moved fluidly in the offense and did what lead guards are supposed to do against an OSU team, giving up 38% from deep in Big 12 play (second to last).

This outing didn't eliminate all the worries about his 31% deep mark and 45.1% effective field goal number in the past five games, but it was a great sign that he can escape those depths. Cincinnati needs its lead guards to play like NCAA Tournament guards in as many games as they get to play over these final 14 days of the season.

Thomas was a whopping plus-32 on Saturday.

UC takes on BYU next, Wednesday at 9 p.m. ET on ESPN2.

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