After playing the past four seasons at the University of Cincinnati, Mamoudou Diarra is more than familiar with the rims at Fifth Third Arena.
Diarra, now a forward at Tennessee Tech, scored 15 points on 4-of-9 shooting in his return to his old stomping grounds Tuesday night.
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"I only had a chance to meet Mamoudou a handful of times when I got the job here and just thought he was a terrific young man," first-year UC coach Wes Miller said. "I wish he wouldn't have played so well for our defense tonight, but for somebody who invested in this program and spent a lot of time here and was really well liked by everybody that he touched. That's one thing that's been so obvious, which speaks to his character. For him to come in here, have a really good night and shoot the ball well, I'm really happy for him."
Despite Diarra's offensive efforts, which included knocking down three 3-pointers, Cincinnati closed out its nonconference slate with a 76-67 win over the Golden Eagles.
Attacking Tennessee Tech's zone defense, Mike Saunders Jr. led the way with 15 points for the Bearcats (10-3). Jeremiah Davenport and Mika Adams-Woods each added 11 points as UC improved to 3-0 all time against the Golden Eagles (3-10).
"In practice, we've been working on our zone offense a lot, making sure we execute and making sure we're getting to the right spots," Saunders said. "So I feel like our zone offense has been a lot better, a lot more fluid. We just have to keep staying focused and keep repping it in practice."
Davenport added seven rebounds and John Newman III and Hayden Koval scored nine points apiece for the Bearcats, who owned a 41-23 advantage in points off the bench and carried a 37-26 lead into halftime.
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"I told the team in there, '10-3 is something to be proud of,' " Miller said. "We should be proud of what we accomplished to this point. We worked really hard to have the right to go out and have a good nonconference record. We want to now go out – we start conference play here in a week – we're going to have to work really, really hard to earn the right to feel that way when conference play ends. So we can't take any steps backwards in our investment, in our approach and in our work ethic. I think it's got to really increase."
Cincinnati will takes a break for the holidays before opening American Athletic Conference play Dec. 28 at No. 13 Houston (10-2).
"I'm happy to get a win and get these guys home for Christmas," Miller said. "They probably need a break from me. I'm a real pain in the ass, because I expect a certain type of approach and mentality every day. ... They probably need a three- or four-day break from me and spend time with families and enjoy Christmas. That will probably be healthy mentally for everybody."
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