UCF vs Cincinnati Prediction 1/11/26 College Basketball Picks Today

The Cincinnati Bearcats and the Central Florida Knights in college basketball action from CFE Arena. Here’s a UCF vs Cincinnati Prediction. We will look at this from a betting perspective and determine the best UCF vs Cincinnati pick.

Cincinnati Bearcats Betting Preview

The Bearcats’ season kicked off with a four-game win streak. Next came a 2-4 run with losses to Louisville, Eastern Michigan, Xavier and Georgia, however. Cincinnati has since gone 2-3 in their last five games with wins over Alabama State and Lipscomb among losses to Clemson, Houston and West Virginia. That gives the Bearcats an 8-7 record across their first 15 games of the season so far.

In the Tuesday matchup versus West Virginia, the Bearcats opened the game with a three-point deficit 31-28 in the first half. Cincinnati got a little better from there on a 32-31 advantage but couldn’t make up the gap during a 62-60 loss on the road. The only player on the team to reach double-digits was Jalen Celestine with 15 points and five rebounds. Day Day Thomas got close on nine points with five assists and two boards.

UCF Knights Betting Preview

Over on the Central Florida side, they lost just one of their first 13 games versus Vanderbilt. Otherwise it was wins over Hofstra, Florida A&M, Texas A&M, Oakland, Pitt, Quinnipiac, VMI, Towson, Mercer, Florida Gulf Coast, Florida Atlantic and Kansas. After another loss to Oklahoma State this past week however, Central Florida is now sitting at 12-2 over their first 14 outings of the year.

Matched up against Oklahoma State on the road back on Tuesday the Knights kicked off the game with a 41-32 deficit in the first half. Central Florida was outscored 46-44 the rest of the way, leading to an 87-76 loss in the end. Riley Kugel put up 15 points with four rebounds and four assists while Themus Fulks had 13 points. Devan Cambridge doubled up on 11 points with 11 rebounds.

Why the UCF Knights will win

• UCF has won each of its last eight games at Addition Financial Arena.
• Cincinnati has lost 15 of its last 16 day games against AP-ranked opponents.
• UCF has won the first half in each of its last five home day games against Conference opponents.

Why the Cincinnati Bearcats will win

• Cincinnati has won five of its last six games against UCF.
• Cincinnati has won the first half in four of its last five day games against UCF.

UCF vs Cincinnati Prediction

I’ll lean toward UCF. This should be a pretty good matchup regardless, though. The Knights took a road loss versus a good Oklahoma State team at Gallagher-Iba Arena this past week, shooting just 37.5 percent from the field and 21.2 percent (7-of-33) from outside, along with a 39-33 rebounding deficit and 11 turnovers. Outside of that, UCF didn’t play too badly in most metrics. The Knights are still scoring well, with 76 or more points in every game so far this year.

As for Cincinnati, they shot just 35.5 percent from the field with a 34-30 rebounding deficit and just 4-of-9 (44.4 percent) from the line in their latest road loss to a pretty tricky West Virginia squad. The Bearcats have now lost consecutive games (albeit versus two tough teams in Houston and WVU), scoring just 60 points in each. We should have a pretty decent total here, though.