Can Cincinnati Bearcats be relevant again in college basketball?

Cincinnati Bearcats basketball has 33 NCAA basketball tournament appearances and a pair of national championship trophies. UC had consecutive NCAA runs from 1958 to 1963 with two national titles under Ed Jucker. Tay Baker made one NCAA Tournament, and Gale Catlett three.

Thirteen seasons passed until Bob Huggins made a Final Four at UC in 1992, and his teams made the NCAA Tournament every year through 2005, with two Elite Eights and a Sweet

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17. After a five-year hiatus, Mick Cronin's Bearcats were NCAA regulars from 2011-2019 with one Sweet
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19. Selection Sunday was an expectation, not a dream.

UC's late implosion in the 2026 Big 12 tournament, blowing an eight-point lead vs. UCF with just over two minutes to go, put them on the outside looking in yet again. It's now been seven consecutive years of staring at the pool from the outside, uninvited. The Enquirer spoke with several national college basketball experts and asked about the future of Bearcats basketball success, especially in March.

Can UC be NCAA Tournament regulars again? Most national pundits agree that UC can become a consistent NCAA Tournament participant again but not without significant investment. The Big 12 was a major upgrade from the American Athletic Conference.

In the AAC, the top teams in UC's last season (2022-23) were Houston, Memphis, Tulane and Temple, and at the bottom of the standings were Tulsa, SMU, East Carolina and South Florida. At the top of the Big 12 this season: Arizona, Houston, Kansas, Texas Tech, Iowa State and TCU. At the bottom: Baylor, Oklahoma State, Kansas State and Utah.

When it left the AAC, UC was receiving a little less than $7 million from the league's media rights deal with ESPN. As a full member of the Big 12 now, the Bearcats have more than quadrupled that at a projected $31.7 million. With big Power Four money comes big expectations and competition.

“It takes a village. You know it’s the toughest league in the country,” said Seth Davis of Hoops HQ and CBS.

“It’s very hard to recruit and pay when you’re competing with teams in that league. You can change coaches if you want, but if you don’t address that part of it, the next coach is going to have the exact same problems.” Davis noted UC's passionate fan base and said he believes they should be able to raise money for the program.

But, do you want a nice court or do you want to court top basketball players? Facilities used to be a draw. UC revamped Shoemaker Center into Fifth Third Arena.

Former athletic director Bob Goin's legacy was Varsity Village and the Richard E. Lindner Center, and current athletic director John Cunningham expected to be "

Big 12 Ready" with the Sheakley Indoor Performance Center. All were major upgrades, but are they as important as they once were?

“It always used to be an interesting conversation in sports, about what’s a good job,” Davis said.

“You would think about facilities, is there a good recruiting base, what’s the leadership? What’s the culture? What’s the tradition?

Now it’s a much simpler proposition. It’s only one question: What’s the number? Johnny isn’t coming because of the weight room.”

Like most programs, how much UC is spending on its basketball roster is a bit of a mystery. Some UC sources have the basketball payroll in the vicinity of $8-10 million, perhaps in the middle of the Big 12 pack. A Big 12 basketball insider says BYU, hands down, is over and above the $10 million figure, having paid that much for two players alone, particularly freshman phenom AJ Dybantsa.

Dybantsa just scored a Big 12 tournament record 40 points in a win over Kansas State. Ironically, the same insider says Kansas State is also at the top of the pack in spending, which may further explain the dismissal of coach Jerome Tang. It also may explain why Kansas State is trying to avoid paying his $18.675 million buyout.

“The hard part is we don’t have a salary cap where we know exclusively what everybody can pay,” Jon Rothstein of CBS said.

“Here’s the bottom line: If you don’t have the money, you have no chance to win.” Big 12= big $ UC upped the ante when moving to the Big 12. Many of the schools have been in power conferences and have the banners to prove it.

Banners lead to bucks. The last Big 12 national champion was Kansas in 2022, and Baylor won in 2021. Houston made the national championship game last year.

The only representative the AAC had in recent years was when Houston made the 2021 Final Four before coming to the Big 12.

“We did a story on Iowa State. They didn’t have those resources, and they kind of had to ‘Moneyball’ a roster together," Brendan Marks of The Athletic said. ”

That can work. It just gives you a much slimmer margin for error." In exchange for a better brand of basketball, you may have to take your lumps. “Cincinnati is a great basketball town,” Mike DeCourcy of the Sporting News said. “I think the winters belong to them. There has to be significant investment in the roster.” Said CBS analyst Gary Parrish, ”

No one’s ever said to me, ‘Man, did you hear what Cincinnati’s spending?’ You hear that sometimes about Louisville, or you’ll hear that about Arkansas or Kentucky or Indiana. You don’t hear that about ...

Cincinnati, which suggests to me they're probably middle of the pack, pretty average or below.” The coaching question UC is parting ways with coach Wes Miller after five seasons in which his teams did not make the NCAA Tournament field. Most experts had the Cincinnati Bearcats as a preseason Top 20 team to start 2024-25, and they did reach as high as No. 16 before falling off the radar.

In 2025-26, they were not on the radar until reaching NCAA Tournament bubble status late in the season.

“I thought last year’s team would have been significantly better,” Rothstein said. Said DeCourcy: “It’s been five years at Cincinnati, and it’s frustrating because I really do believe he (Miller) is a capable coach. I don’t think he’s been able to build a successful culture there, and that’s the disappointing part.”

DeCourcy said he believes then-AD Mike Bohn made a mistake in not renewing Cronin and allowing him to leave for UCLA. "

The administration at the time didn’t understand what it could mean for Cincinnati if they locked up Mick for well into the next decade," DeCourcy said. Marks of The Athletic said he thinks UC may not have spent wisely. Davis said he thinks Miller hasn't forgotten how to coach, but Big 12 fans demand instant results.

“The goal of the University of Cincinnati is to be in the NCAA Tournament every single year,” Rothstein said.

“Cincinnati hasn’t been in the NCAA Tournament since 2019, Mick Cronin’s last year. As we know, Cincinnati went to nine tournaments in a row before he left.” Bottom line for Bearcats “The question becomes what’s the number?”

Davis said.

“What’s the payroll compared to other schools in the league and other schools around the country.