CINCINNATI (AP) -- Only the Cincinnati bench realized the enormous stakes as the Bearcats closed out a lopsided win.

If Mississippi Valley State had scored one more basket, the nation's top-ranked team would have lined up to shake hands and then started running sprints.

	Freshman guard Kenny Satterfield led Cincinnati with 16 points Saturday.

Cincinnati got solid shooting from guards Steve Logan, Kenny Satterfield and DerMarr Johnson when it mattered in the first half, then went soft and sometimes went through the motions in a 74-48 victory Saturday night.

Three days after its grinding win over seventh-ranked North Carolina in the Great Eight, Cincinnati (7-0) had an easy time at the outset against a team accustomed to getting manhandled. But coach Bob Huggins didn't like how the Bearcats finished.

If Mississippi Valley State (1-7) had hit one more basket at slop time and reached the 50-point mark, Huggins was going to make his players run the court after the game.

"The crowd wouldn't have even gotten out of here and we would have been running," said Pete Mickeal, who had a team-high 12 rebounds. "We weren't going into the locker room, we were running."

That would have been the most interesting part of the evening. The game was so lopsided in the first half and sloppy in the second that fans went silent for long stretches and groaned at the mistakes.

Cincinnati unnerved Mississippi Valley State with its half-court traps, forcing one hurried shot after another. The Delta Devils missed 11 of their first 12 and turned the ball over five times as Cincinnati pulled ahead 21-2 in the opening minutes.

The Bearcats led 45-13 at halftime, when Huggins insisted that his team continue to play hard and work on things. He wasn't happy to get outscored and outrebounded in the second half, when the Bearcats substituted freely and eased up on the traps.

One more basket and he would have made them run.

"The whole deal is to try to get better," Huggins said.

"That's what we talked about at halftime, and we didn't do it. We kind of work hard and get to a point and then think everything's easy, I guess.

"We're on course to be good. We're not on course to be great. We don't want to do what we need to do to be great."

Mississippi Valley State coach Lafayette Stribling called Cincinnati a great team, but conceded that the second half was a little baffling.

"How did we manage to score 35 in the second half and 13 in the first half against the same team?" he said. "But this has happened to us throughout the year. We haven't been a good first-half team. Everybody that's beaten us has gotten their points in the first half."

The Delta Devils' six previous losses came by an average of 23 points.

Satterfield led Cincinnati with 16 points, Logan had 13 and Johnson added 12 as the Bearcats often shuffled their lineup.

Henry Jordan scored 10 for Mississippi Valley State before fouling out with 13:18 to play. Dante Thorton led with 15 points.

Cincinnati, playing at home for the first time since Nov. 20, extended its home-court winning streak to 34 games by dominating and then easing up after getting ahead by 40 midway through the second half.

Mississippi Valley State had 14 turnovers and only six field goals in the first half, shooting 21.4 percent. The Delta Devils packed in their defense to contain the Bearcats' brawnier front line and succeeded at that, but left the perimeter open.

Cincinnati was 6-of-13 on 3-point attempts in the half and shot 56 percent overall in the decisive half.

The game's most interesting moments had nothing to do with the score.

Kenyon Martin, Cincinnati's career leader in blocked shots, had one of his own rejected by Jordan in the first half. Martin gave him a congratulatory pat.

There were groans when Martin missed an alley-oop dunk at the end of a 4-on-1 fastbreak in the first half, then more when Mickeal missed a breakaway dunk in the second.