Three Man Weave: Houston Punishes Cincinnati 71-53

The Cougars have won five-straight games against the Bearcats.

CINCINNATI — The Cincinnati Bearcats (17-13, 7-10) fought hard in the first half—but didn't have enough in the gas tank against the Houston Cougars (25-4, 14-2) in a 71-53 loss.

Fabian White (career-high 28 points, 10 rebounds) and the rest of Houston buttered their bread with starting firepower (0 bench points) and physicality as Cincinnati dropped their fourth-straight game amidst an end-of-season free fall.

Here's the Three Man Weave on Cincinnati's fifth-straight loss to Houston.

Fabian White Goes To Work

The Cougars needed to reshape their offense around White due to early-season injuries, and the winningest player in program history was happy to oblige. White is a human bowling ball with a jump shot.

Tuesday marked his fourth double-double of the season—and it included a career-high in points. Jeremiah Davenport had no idea what to do with White's superior size and space creation.

He split offensive and defensive rebounds 5-5, creating extra opportunities. White and Taze Moore (12 points, six rebounds) were the only Cougars to make multiple three-pointers in the game as well.

"I thought we had a good game plan," head coach Wes Miller said. "Our guys did an excellent job at learning their actions and taking what they learned in practice into the first half of tonight's game. I liked how we competed in the first 20 minutes. We made some frustrating errors, but we competed. I didn't like the way we started the second half, and you get in that hole again."

That first-half plan didn't work against White—who dropped 20 points on 8-of-12 shooting in the first 20 minutes. It's not easy to post an effective field goal rate over 50% on 21 shots, but White pulled it off (52%). He was a big reason Houston outscored UC 32-20 in the paint.

Josh Carlton Leads Free Throw Brigade

The Cougars destroyed Cincinnati with physicality, and unsurprisingly that showed up on the glass and in free throw attempts. Josh Carlton (15 points, nine rebounds, game-high 9-of-11 FTs) was a key factor in both of those categories.

The 6-foot-11, slinky beast shredded Cincinnati's paper-thin interior as Abdul Ado (11 minutes, one steal) played limited minutes and still looks hampered by injury. Carlton knew UC would play him tight and timed his shots perfectly to earn whistles.

Tuesday marked the third-most FT attempts from Carlton this season. He and White had the feel for Cincinnati's defense early on, and Kelvin Sampson spammed those matchups. White led Houston with a 43.3% usage rate, and Carlton was second behind him at 24.3%

The free throw advantage in this game was striking. Cincinnati has to fix that part of the game this offseason. Fray the nets, 1,000 shots a day, I don't know what the fix is, but Tuesday was a microcosm of the entire season.

The Bearcats were 5-of-16 on FTs to Houston's 20-of-24 mark. Cincinnati now ranks 336th nationally in FT% (66.3%). Among the bottom-20 teams in FT%—just two have an offensive efficiency in the top-150.

It's very difficult to be a good offense barfing up free points like that.

John Newman III Keeps Connecting

Bearcats fans just got the news that John Newman III is returning for next season after the loss to South Florida, and he followed it up with another team-best performance. The senior posted 11 points, a team-high seven rebounds, and two assists.

Watch any Bearcats game for the full 40 minutes, and it's not hard to notice Newman filling in the margins. He continued that identity against Houston in constant ground fights for the ball and tied for the team lead with two offensive rebounds.

Newman had the second-highest game score (9.3) and the second-highest eFG% (63%) on the team behind Mike Saunders (86% eFG, 10 game score).

Saunders dropped 14 points and three rebounds on 5-of-7 shooting. He looked like his usual quick self but slowed down well at times to find advantageous cutting lanes. Getting strong play from returning pieces is just about the only thing Bearcats fans can hope for amidst one of the worst stretches of Cincinnati basketball over the past five years.

The Bearcats close the regular season on Thursday against SMU. Tip-off is at 7 p.m. on ESPNU.

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