Preview: Cincinnati Goes on the Road to Take on Struggling East Carolina

The Pirates have lost their past two games by a combined 60 points.

CINCINNATI — The Bearcats men's basketball team hits the road for the second time this week looking to shake off a rough offensive showing against Temple. Cincinnati (14-6, 4-3) battles East Carolina (11-8, 2-5) in Greenville, North Carolina, on Sunday afternoon.

Wes Miller's team already dispatched the Pirates 79-71 in Fifth Third Arena earlier this month. ECU forward Vance Jackson dropped 35 points, but none of his teammates complemented the outing. The Pirates have lost 3-of-4 games since (including a 79-36 loss at Houston) and sit in eighth place in the AAC.

Cincinnati comes into the game ranked 75th in KenPom, while ECU sits at 165th. ESPN's matchup predictor has UC winning 59.6% of the time.

The Bearcats are up against a wall in terms of their NCAA Tournament hopes. Most evaluators either had them as one of the last teams in the "Next Four Out" or completely off the bubble altogether. Cincinnati has 11 games left in the regular season and can only afford maybe two losses the rest of the way to have a chance for an at-large bid.

Both of those can't come against Houston either. The AAC is down this season, and with Memphis at 5-4 in league play, Houston is the only chance remaining for a Q1 win, and the Q2 worthy teams outside of SMU are barely hanging in Q2 contention (Memphis No. 74 in the NET rankings; Wichita State No. 79 in NET rankings).

A Q3 road loss to ECU is a nail in UC's coffin, and they'll try to avoid that by taking advantage of recent rough showings from the Pirates.

ECU has been outright terrible in conference play; they are allowing the most points (78.6) and second-highest field goal rate (47.5%) in the conference so far. Dive deeper into their defensive efficiency, and you get a team allowing a 50.7% effective field goal rate (254th nationally) and a defensive efficiency of 103.7 (190th) on the whole season.

This is a get-right game for Cincinnati and a chance to post their second road win in AAC play. That setup can change quickly if workhorses Tristen Newton (AAC Stats: team-high 17.4 points, team-high 4.3 assists, team-high 1.6 steals) and Vance Jackson (AAC Stats: 13 points, team-high 6.3 rebounds) come ready to play.

The latter did that beautifully with 35 points in Cincinnati earlier this month. Jackson scorched Cincinnati from deep (8-for-11) and was all over the glass with nine rebounds. The performance played into exactly how UC can attack this team on Sunday: One of the two can go off, but not both.

Newton struggled in these two teams' first matchup. The guard posted 11 points on 4-of-11 shooting and didn't hit a three. Cincinnati seemingly gave the rest of the AAC a fine blueprint to stop Newton. Before the game in Clifton, Newton shot 48.6% on the year, and in the four games since the 79-71 loss he is shooting 38.5%.

ECU could use strong games from both of their leading players in scoring and minutes. Newton (331) and Jackson (201) are the only ECU players topping 175 points produced so far this season. The Pirates have just two other players with over 140 points produced. That duo drives the bus for ECU offensively, but one-half is contributing to the defensive issues.

The Pirates haven't done much of anything well on that end; they are second-to-last in the AAC in three-point percentage allowed (10th, 38%), free throw attempts allowed (10th, 20.9), and blocks (10th, 2.1).

Jackson has been a target on defense every step of the way. Of players to appear in every AAC game so far, Jackson has the second-worst defensive rating in conference play (110 points per 100 possessions), narrowly behind Tremont Robinson-White (110.2).

The same issues are true when looking at the season-long box plus/minus. Jackson has the worst DBPM of any player on the team that's logged at least 300 minutes (-1.3). The 6-foot-9 senior is a lights-out shooter (42.6% from deep, third in AAC), but the leaky defense makes his impact negligible. Defensive statistics in basketball are hard to trust across the board, but they are telling when a player ranks poorly in every defensive metric.

Cincinnati needs to mix up its offensive sets and use the confusion to target Jackson and Newton for that matter. The lanky guard owns the 22nd-best steal rate in the conference (2.6%), but those gambles bite more than they build.

Newton is right behind Jackson with the second-worst defensive rating in the conference (108.3). His backcourt running mate Tremont Robinson-White has the same tendencies. White is fifth in the AAC in steal rate (3.89%) but sports the worst defensive rating in conference play of any Pirate that's played over 140 minutes.

The Bearcats got far too trigger happy early in the shot clock against Temple. They can't make that mistake on their second road trip of the week. Sunday represents a great opportunity to work out the offensive road kinks against a poor defensive team that likes to gamble.

Wes Miller can preach patience in this game. The first shot often isn't the best one, and with how much ECU likes to go for steals, it will rarely be the best shot on Sunday. The Bearcats had moments of sound offense against Temple, and then they'd take a difficult shot early in the clock for three straight possessions.

They won't have to play that frenetic style against ECU as the team tries to break the 64-point mark on the road for just the second time this season. Sunday's game tips off at noon ET. Fans can watch all of the action on ESPNU.

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