Local Teams

Jeremiah Davenport matched his career high of 18 points before Keith Williams helped carry Cincinnati to a 76-69 win over SMU on Thursday in Dallas.

The Bearcats (3-6, 1-3 American Athletic Conference) snapped a five-game losing skid by seizing control down with the stretch of the second half with a 15-2 run. Davenport kept Cincinnati afloat for most of the second half, scoring seven consecutive points before Williams rebounded from a slow start.

Williams started 1 for 9 from the field and scored his first basket at the 2:45 left in the first half. But his layup with 2:00 left to play gave Cincinnati the lead for good at 68-67, and Williams followed with an assist on a Tari Eason (14 points) dunk that extended that advantage. Eason added a transition dunk with 41 seconds left that pushed the Bearcats to a 72-67 lead. Williams scored 12 points.

Mika Adams-Woods gave the Bearcats their first lead since 8-6 with his 3-pointer with 2:41 left but SMU guard Kendrick Davis answered with a layup through a foul on the other end. Davis missed the subsequent free throw and Cincinnati followed by finally wrestling control.

Davis led the Mustangs (6-2, 2-2) with 14 points and a conference-record 14 assists. But SMU, which entered the game first in the conference in 3-point shooting, hit 5 of 21 treys and, despite leading throughout, could never quite shake Cincinnati.

Cincinnati had five turnovers by the 11:51 mark of the first half and, combined with 6-of-7 shooting following an 0 for 4 start by SMU, fell into an early deficit that required hard labor to erase. Ethan Chargois extended the SMU lead to 26-17 on a transition layup off the feed from Davis only for Cincinnati to mount an 11-2 run capped by an Eason second-chance basket.

The Mustangs fueled the Cincinnati run to a 30-30 deadlock with seven empty possessions, but when Davis converted a layup just prior to the buzzer, SMU took a 37-32 lead into the break.

--Field Level Media