Three Man Weave: Cincinnati Bounces Back With Win Over Tarleton State

CINCINNATI — The Bearcats got the win on Monday night, but didn't look great again inside Fifth Third Arena across their 76-58 result against Tarleton State.

Wes Miller's team continues to trend in the wrong direction on offense as they forked over far too many turnovers, but hit enough threes this time around to win. That's no impressive feat against a TSU team that was missing three of its top scorers, including the nation's second-leading bucket getter in Dior Johnson.

Day Day Thomas (19 points, five rebounds, six assists) continued claiming his stake as the Bearcats' best player this season in the win with a nice, sharpshooting display.

Cincinnati used multiple 10-plus point runs to leave little doubt about the result, although TSU did trail by just two points at halftime.

Fastbreak Storyline: Offensive Identity Missing

Cincinnati regressed to the positive mean and hit more outside shots on Monday night (15-36), but it was anything but pretty again, especially in the first half. Kerr Kriisa (20 points, three assists, 6-11 from deep) shook off some shooting rust to buoy out those numbers, and the three-ball was basically Cincinnati's only successful look.

A TSU squad much smaller than UC's hung on the glass too long with the home team (16-14 in 1H rebounds) and kept it close in the paint as well (20-18 paint points advantage for TSU). Cincinnati has to find a way to run more diverse action inside the three-point arc and find slashers to finish, or there is no reason to think the stagnation will stop.

Baba Miller (13 points, 11 rebounds, seven turnovers) returned in this game and committed seven first-half turnovers, knocking the rust off. He is the one clear slasher to arise so far this season, but he was in a creator role a lot on Monday. That can't happen to a player fresh off injury, but it did, and UC coughed away 20 turnovers. The mistakes stacked on top of each other may have led to another home loss without Thomas and Kriisa's threes.

Again, this isn't the plucky TSU team that's played well thanks to Dior Johnson this season; they didn't have him on top of a few other key players and still fought with the Bearcats on their home floor as a completely outmatched team talent-wise. UC's offense is bad enough to lose to just about anyone at this point, and Monday got tight again as a result.

Star of the Game: Day Day Thomas

Thomas found a hot spot on the left side of the three-point break line in this game and spammed it to great effect. The veteran was also the only UC player to initiate consistently strong actions on the night against the Texans.

Thomas has really turned up his shooting ability this season, hitting over 50% from deep and over 96% from the free-throw line as the only player on the team with multiple years of experience shooting inside Fifth Third Arena. He's playing nearly 30 minutes per game, which is a career high, and has been the steadiest mast on these stormy Cincinnati basketball seas so far.

TSU kept it far too close on Monday night, and it would've been even closer without Thomas's outing, plus an overall solid return from Miller in what will need to be an every-game showing as the schedule gets much tougher here on out.

Cincinnati has a ton to clean up before taking on Xavier inside Cintas Center at 7:30 p.m. ET on Friday.

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