The Cincinnati Bearcats (17-7 7-4) rolled to a 76-54 victory over the St John's Red Storm on Wednesday night at Madison Square Garden.

It was a Cincinnati team looking to erase the memory of a bad home loss to St John's a month ago, and they did just that by suffocating Red Storm star freshmen D'Angelo Harrison and Mo Harkless.

The duo played a huge role in the upset win at UC on January 7th, and Cincinnati head coach Mick Cronin designed his scouting report to keep Harrison from getting good looks and keeping Harkless off the glass.

It was mission accomplished as Harrison when 4-13 from the floor with a majority of his 15 points coming after UC had the game in hand while Harkless only collected 5 rebounds.

“In football they put the red jersey on the quarterback, the last couple of days we had a white t shirt on D'Angelo Harrison,” Cronin said. “Our guys were trained to find him, we were not going to let him beat us tonight.”

The Bearcats won the rebounding battle 49-29 and only allowed SJU to grab 10 of their 39 missed shots.

A surprising factor there was Cashmere Wright who recorded a career high 10 boards to go with 12 points on the victory. He also produced 4 assists and 4 steals for a well-rounded stat line.

“Cashmere Wright 7 defensive, 10 rebounds for your point guard,” said Cronin. “It's off the charts for a guy like that to get 10 rebounds. He did an excellent job. The key to defense is getting the right stops, guarding the right people but if you don't rebound it negates great defense.”

On the defensive end UC was as good as they have been all season, and they didn't disappoint on the offensive end by shooting 31-60 (51.7%) from the floor and 7-16 (43.8) from long range on the night.

Cronin has talked at length recently about the team improving their passing if they were going to get to where they wanted to be, and his squad did just that tonight with 18 assists as they made the right pass more often that not.

“18 assists for our team,” Cronin said. “That's something we've really talked about, it's the key to really playing well on the offensive end and shooting a high percentage. Getting each other open shots, making one extra pass or the right pass. The guys are trying to do that.”

With four players in double figures scoring including Yancy Gates and Sean Kilpatrick putting up a team high 14 each coupled with the defense shutting down Harrison and Harkless there were a lot of positives to take from the victory.

What might be easy to gloss over is the play of junior center Cheikh Mbodj in the 2nd half.

Mbodj has struggled to recover from two sprains to the same ankle before the season started, and at times the feeling was the JUCO transfer was really only going to have a chance to contribute as a senior.

He was toughing out any minutes he could give over the past month as he tried to regain strength in the injured ankle, and finally tonight things started to come together on both ends of the floor.

“He has practiced so well in the last two weeks and it just hasn't translated until the 2nd half tonight,” said Cronin. “He finally got comfortable on both ends of the floor. I think he's nervous to be honest with you.”

While he only scored two points, he did grab 5 rebounds and most importantly blocked 5 shots playing the middle of the zone for 16 minutes.

If he can build upon this performance, he really helps lock down the interior of the UC defense that has struggled of late when Yancy Gates isn't on the floor.

“His defense has been what's been great the last two weeks,” Cronin said. “As he's gotten his ankle stronger his shot blocking has been off the charts in practice. When you've got a guy in the middle of the zone blocking shots and erasing the mistakes of other people it matters.”

The Bearcats will look to extend their winning streak to 3 games on Saturday in Milwaukee against the Marquette Golden Eagles at 3 pm.