It's over

Surely no one wanted to see the season end with six straight losses, but it was clear down the stretch that this team, extremely limited to start with, simply ran out of gas. Give them credit for fighting to the end agaisnt Pitt after absorbing that 45-point loss to UConn.

“We fought hard to get to the Big East tournament,” Mick Cronin said. “That’s all we were focused on. So now that we’re here we wanted to make sure that we showed what Cincinnati basketball was all about – fight hard, compete, never give up. Anybody that was in the arena tonight saw that.”

Of course, fighting hard is not the goal here. Winning is. The Bearcats surpassed what they were able to do last year, but now they have to take up another few notches next year to keep this thing on course. Whether they'll be able to do that remains to be seen, but the fact that Rashad Bishop was more assertive tonight, scoring 11 points with five rebounds, was a good sign.

I talked briefly with Mike Williams after the game and he's champing at the bit to get to next season. He should make a big difference. He needs to. So does Yancy Gates and Cashmere Wright.