Jerrod Calhoun and the Bearcats started the 2026-27 season with a victory over American on Monday night 79-53.

Cincinnati ripped the Eagles oofense up in the second half, allowing less than 35% shooting and winning the glass by double-digits overall.

Calhoun's team still has a ways to go toward hitting its peak ceiling in his first season, but Monday was a nice start for this veteran-laden group. One veteran to watch is Jayden Hastings, who suffered an arm injury early in the game.

"I don't know. We'll probably know tomorrow," Calhoun said about the shoulder injury. "Looked like it popped out of the socket and then it came back in. That's why we could put him back in. I don't know if the second time the same thing happened or not. The only other time I've seen that was Joe Mazzula when I was coaching at West Virginia. That was a very weird bam bam, you know, with the shoulder. So hopefully he is okay because he's a big part of what we're going to do."

The Bearcats’ roster averaged almost 60 career games played and 30 starts entering the season opener.

MJ Collins Jr. led the Bearcats with 134 career games played (81 starts), Amani Lyles has played in 116 games (42 starts), and Myles Colvin has appeared in 102 games (32 starts). Riley Allenspach was a game shy of 100 appearances (35 starts) entering the night, while Tyler Tejada had played in 93 games (83 career starts - most of any Bearcat) and Tylen Riley had seen action in 89 contests (51 starts) during his career.

"I thought we took a lot of me shots early. We settled. I think four of our first five shots were contested threes. I hadn't seen this group do that. Not to say we're selfish. I just think we were way, way too antsy, and hopefully we'll be more settled on Thursday," Calhoun noted.

Cincinnati now has a couple of days off before facing Green Bay at home again on Thursday at 7 p.m. ET. The game is airing on ESPN+.

Check out the full comments from all of the Bearcats below:

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