Giving up 46.7% shooting and shooting just 35.7% yourself must be great numbers to you.
again, youre not adjusting for quality of opponent by pointing out those #s. Of course their #s are gonna be dramatically worse against the BE teams. They dont/nor should they get a ton of credit for blitzing an inept Toledo team. Nor should they get overly penalized for sucking offensively/defensively against a Pittsburgh team ranked top 5 in the country in offense and top 20 in the country in defense.
These #s arent just magically produced. Theyre 13th in the nation for adjusted defensive efficiency
adjusted defensive efficiency defined= points allowed per possession while ADJUSTING for quality of opponent.
and more importantly, if two possessions in the St Johns game goes differently at the end of the game, are we even having this discussion? I highly doubt it. Lets not be so overly short term results oriented and remember this team is still the best defensive team cincinnati has had since the huggins era. They were favored in that St Johns game by 5.5 and favored in the W Va game. Vegas doesnt just get favorited teams wrong on a regular basis. They do like to set a fair line and get action and really id imagine if it was as simple as "oh, they suck against the good teams" then every professional gambler wouldve made mad bank betting against the bearcats in those games.
They played horrible basketball for just about the first 32 minutes and really, the last 90 seconds too. This team had no business whatsoever even being close in that game with the level it performed at, yet somehow still had every opportunity to win the game at the end. Did they get it done? No. Is that disappointing? Definitely. Does it mean they suck against quality competetion....meh. I guess everyones gonna be betting the farm against the bearcats and laughing all the way to the bank bc on wed UC is gonna be right around a 2 pt favorite, although it wouldnt shock me if it moved to about a pickem game.
def efficiency for each season that its been tracked and ADJUSTED for by each opponent
03 UC 14th in the nation at 89.3 pts per 100 possessions
04 UC 19th in the nation at 89.8 pts per 100 possessions
05 UC 16th in the nation at 89.5 pts per 100 possessions Hugs last year
06 UC 62nd in the nation at 94.6 pts per 100 possessions Kennedy year 1
07 UC 98th in the nation at 97.2 pts per 100 possessions Mick year 1
08 UC 72nd in the nation at 95.3 pts per 100 possessions
09 UC 104th in the nation at 97.9 pts per 100 possessions
10 UC 59th in the nation at 93.8 pts per 100 possessions
11 UC 13th in the nation at 89.6 pts per 100 possessions
