Cincinnati at Kansas Basketball Predictions: Bouncing Back Again
The Kansas Jayhawks flopped on the road against the Mountaineers, the second time this season that they have gone on the road in Big 12 Conference play and suffered a puzzling loss. But as we have seen multiple times over the course of the Bill Self tenure, it's the next game that you really have to worry about.
The opponent that will be facing off in tonight's game will have to deal with the anger of the Kansas coach and the likely energy that comes from getting chewed out for playing poorly at a place like Kansas. That team is the Cincinnati Bearcats, who are having a decent debut season in the conference. Can they double down on the "teams that lose to Oklahoma and then play Kansas well" dynamic, or will they get a rude awakening in their first conference play trip to Allen Fieldhouse?
Do you disagree with our assessment? Make sure you read them all and then hope over to the Discord or on Twitter to share your own thoughts.
Kyle Davis
Check out our Cincinnati Preview for Kyle's full breakdown and prediction.
Derek Noll
Bill Self rarely loses back to back games so I expect Kansas to win this, but I don’t think that it’ll be easy. It’s a quick turnaround for both teams and Cincinnati will be tough. Only their conference season opening win against BYU had a margin of more than three points (they won by 11) as their next four conference games, two wins and two losses, have all been within three points or fewer. I expect the Jayhawks to come out strong in this one, hopefully with an emphasis on boxing out and grabbing rebounds because Viktor Lahkin and Dan Skillings rank in the top 12 in the conference in rebounding. It’s Allen Fieldhouse, so I’ll take KU with a bounceback win and a nice night from a motivated Hunter Dickinson.
Kansas 80, Cincinnati 74.
Brendan Dzwierzynski
To Derek’s point, the last two times that KU lost back-to-back games in a stretch that included a true home game were last season and Feb. 2013. That kind of thing doesn’t happen often, and I have a hard time seeing Cincinnati pulling off an upset in Lawrence, a place it hasn’t played in since 1967. The Bearcats are good defensively, No. 22 in the country in adjusted defense per KenPom, but I still trust KU's superstar playmakers to get it done at home. Cincinnati also doesn't shoot the three very often, so even an "OK" day beyond the arc may be enough to seal this game for KU. The Jayhawks are favored by 8.5, and while I think they’ll win, I can’t trust this team to win by such a margin against anyone at the moment.
Kansas 75, Cincinnati 70.
Andy Mitts
Look, I realize that I shouldn't have referred to anything in Morgantown as "easy". But the point still stands, because everything pointed to a dominant Kansas win. And I don't think it is reasonable to expect that a team is going to go ballistic from beyond the arc, even if Kansas wasn't quite closing out as well as they should have been.
Is Kansas once again the clearly better team? Yes. Did they respond well the last time they dropped a weird one on the road? Yes. They are at home against a team that everyone knows you can't take lightly with the main defensive trait being that they rebound well. Since offensive rebounding isn't really a huge part of the Kansas game, I expect that Jayhawks to be able to push their advantages and take home an angry win.
Kansas 72, Cincinnati 67.
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