Three Man Weave: Cincinnati Collapses Against West Virginia 54-49

CINCINNATI — The Bearcats made dubious history on Thursday night in a 58-54 loss to West Virginia at home, their second loss to WVU this season.

UC's clamp-down defense showed up in front of their crowd and completely shut down the Mountaineers' outside shooting and offense overall ... in the first half. Then things slipped away as they have so often this season. WVU hit 6-12 from deep in the second frame and flipped the script.

Honor Huff (16 points) had a lot to do with the Mountaineers come back win.

Cincinnati weathered the slowed-down pace fora bit, but didn't get enough scoring from players outside Baba Miller (15 points, eight rebounds) and Jizzle James (18 points, one rebound) to pull off the win. It moved them to 12-15 all-time against West Virginia and 11-12 on the 2025-26 season.

UC fell below .500 to mark just the fourth season since 2007 where that's happened to this program.

Defensive Dog Fight

These teams played to just 122 total points last month, and the defensive takeover was even more pronounced tonight. UC clearly missed Moustapha Thiam and Shon Abaev's size and passing connectedness at times.

Miller was on his own as the main big for a big part of the game and had to play nearly the whole contest to keep UC alive on the glass (34-33 in rebounds).

UC completely shut down that outside shooting in the first half, but the second half tidal wave overcame them to make things very close down the stretch. Cincinnati blew a 14-point lead in this game during an outing where neither team shot over 41%, and UC was at 36.4%.

It was the same offensive story, it's been all season for one of the 150-worst scoring efficiency units in the nation. Cincinnati got bogged down in the half-court far too much, and once the three-pointers opened up for WVU, UC's horrendous offense couldn't keep the gap wide enough.

No Cincinnati player had an offensive rating over 95 in this game during one of the worst offensive performances of the season. Wes Miller's team got 53 shots up against their rival. It's higher than WVU's average this season, but once again, UC couldn't make enough shots to complement its great defense.

Bearcats Player Of The Game: Baba Miller

The Bearcats' lone big man at points tonight took on that mantle with great responsibility. Miller responded from his season-low two points really well to lead the Bearcats in scoring like he normally does and play great defense on the other end in this grinding loss. UC's scattered bigs had foul trouble all night outside of Miller.

Miller posted an okay shooting night against a solid WVU defense, shooting 5-9 overall, and continued to work around the basket after missing his normal three-point attempts in games.

His rebounding played a huge role in UC's shot advantage as well and marked another outing where he almost led the team on the glass. Miller led the team in rebounding every game but five this season. Jalen Celestine posted the most rebounds for UC (10).

The Bearcats have relied on Miller's consistencies a whole lot this season, and his strong play is a big reason why they were 9-2 as betting favorites on the campaign entering tonigth. This loss doesn't change their postseason projections much. Miller and the rest of the Bearcats will have to win the Big 12 Tournament by some miracle if they want to go to the NCAA Tournament.

The Bearcats will try to get back to .500 on Sunday at 2 p.m. ET against UCF. The game is airing on CBS Sports Network.

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