The nation’s leading scorer will try to shake his team out of a late-season swoon when BYU visits Cincinnati Tuesday night in a Big 12 showdown.
Coming off a 79-71 loss on Saturday at West Virginia, BYU (20-9, 8-8 Big 12) has dropped three of four since losing Richie Saunders and his 18.0 points per game to a torn ACL on Feb. 14. The Cougars tumbled out of the AP Top 25 poll Monday for the first time this season.
AJ Dybantsa, who leads college basketball with 24.9 points per game, had 20 points and seven rebounds in the latest setback. BYU allowed West Virginia to close the first half on a 23-5 run to take a 40-26 halftime lead, which infuriatedCougars head coach Kevin Young.
“The first half was a joke,” Young said. “Not the whole half, but they went on that flurry, and it was, some of those clips we watched at halftime, and it was inexcusable. So I thought our guys responded at halftime and brought better effort in the second half.”
Cincinnati (16-13, 8-8) is in a furious late-season push to improve its NCAA Tournament resume. The Bearcats’ 91-68 rout of Oklahoma State on Saturday marked their fifth win in six games, which has enabled them to climb from 85th to 49th in the NET rankings that help the NCAA Tournament committee do its job.
“It’s hard to win Big 12 games,” Cincinnati head coach Wes Miller said. “That’s a very good team. To win by that kind of a margin, obviously, you feel good about that.”
Now the Bearcats hope to feel good on Senior Night, which will honor Day Day Thomas, Baba Miller, Jalen Celestine and Grant Darbyshire.
Thomas comes in after matching his career high with seven 3-pointers in his 26-point outburst against Oklahoma State. Miller approached a triple-double with 11 points, eight rebounds and eight assists before coming out with more than four minutes left. Big man Moustapha Thiam added 24 points and a career-best 15 rebounds as the Bearcats led by as many as 32.
Thiam has been a force of late for Cincinnati. He notched his fifth double-double of the season and second in a row, while Thomas reached the 1,000-point career milestone.
“I knew I was close, but I wasn’t worried too much about it. I was just trying to get the win,” Thomas said. “It’s a blessing to reach 1K, you know, especially with my story. That’s kind of big for me.”
