ORLANDO, FL – Well, that was ugly, but the top seed Cincinnati Bearcats pulled out a hard-fought 61-51 victory over a depleted SMU team to advance to the semifinals of the American Athletic Conference tournament on Friday. The game was reminiscent of the Bearcats’ low scoring, poor-shooting slugfests they used to play in the Big East.
Cincinnati coach Mick Cronin opened the postgame press conference by joking, “In honor of my coach Huggins outfit today, we won without making shots,” a reference to many of Huggins’ defensive-first teams from his tenure at Cincinnati. Cronin wasn’t too far off.