The Missouri Tigers picked a bad night to go cold. The Big XII representatives shot just 36.9% from the field (24-for-65) and failed to contain Cincinnati inside as the Bearcats fought off several attempted rallies by the Tigers to win 78-63 in Thursday night's 2nd round NCAA Tournament game. Cincinnati, the No. 6 seed in the West Regional, secured themselves a Saturday date with the No. 3 seed Connecticut Huskies as a result of their win. The two Big East foes already met once before this season, with the Huskies running out 67-59 victors on February 27 at Fifth Third Arena in Cincinnati.

The first ten minutes of the game were closely contested, but Cincinnati took control of the first half with a 21-10 spurt that covered the final 9:22 of the first half. The run started with a driving dunk by Larry Davis that the senior from Houston, Texas turned in to a three-point play at the foul line. That made the score 21-19 to the Bearcats, and from that point, Missouri only recorded two field goals for the rest of the half.

Nothing, apart from shooting just 9-for-31 (29.0%) from the field in the first half, encapsulated the Tigers' poor performance as when junior Laurence Bowers went up for a slam with four and a half minutes to play, only to see the ball slip out of his hand and bounce off the front of the rim.  

Cincinnati stretched the lead to 43-28 early in the second half, but to their credit, Missouri gamely staged a partial rally and cut their deficit to 54-48 on a Justin Safford dunk with 10:12 remaining. But junior forward Yancy Gates, who led all scorers with 18 points and grabbed 11 rebounds to record his seventh double-double of the season, answered at the other end with a thunderous dunk of his own to goose the margin back to eight points. The Tigers never got closer, and the game was effectively sealed when Gates, who had made just two three-pointers all year, knocked down his second of the night with 4:34 remaining to make the score 70-55 to Cincinnati.

Gates was joined in double figures by Dion Dixon (16 points), Cashmere Wright (11 points), and Sean Kilpatrick (10 points). For Missouri, Ricardo Ratcliffe (13 points), Michael Dixon (11 points), Marcus Denmon (10 points), and Bowers (10 points) all finished with over ten points.