February is the shortest month of the year, but it must have felt like an eternity for the University of Cincinnati men's basketball team.
The Bearcats entered the month with high optimism, winning four of their last five games with 10 regular-season games to play.
More:'We've just got to get back to playing Cincinnati basketball': UC vows to finish strong
But Cincinnati went 2-6 over the next 28 days, starting with a 22-point blowout loss to first-place Houston at home and losses to Tulsa and South Florida, the two worst teams in the American Athletic Conference.
With the turbulent stretch, UC (17-12, 7-9) doused any shot it had at earning an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament and played its way out of contention for a first-round bye in the AAC Tournament (March 10-13 in Fort Worth, Texas).
Despite that, Cincinnati senior John Newman III remains optimistic.
"Look, losing is hard, but I still believe we can accomplish everything we wanted to accomplish this year," he said following Saturday night's last-second loss to last-place South Florida. "We can put our heads down and feel sorry for ourselves and pout and give up, because a lot of teams in college basketball would give up right now, but I know that's not the kind of person I am and that's not the kind of guys that I have in the locker room with me. So we're just going to keep going and keep fighting. That's all we can do."
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