Maybe the outcome wasn’t a surprise when Cincinnati beat Connecticut Saturday and perhaps you could even see the 27-3 final score and say that that, too, wasn’t entirely unexpected.

Yet the style in which the Bearcats won was most alarming. They completely dismantled a very soild UConn team and took the Huskies apart from start to finish.

Andre Dixon, the dreadlocked bundle of enthusiasm, thought about cutting left and finding no room. Dixon, who had run for more than 100 yards four times in seven games, thought about cutting right and finding nothing there, either.

He thought and he thought. He thought about the telephone booth the Cincinnati defense had stuffed his team into Saturday and finally Dixon said it:

“We got our ass busted.”

After losing to Louisville and Pitt, Cincinnati has taken down South Florida and Connecticut and looks to beat a third straight ranked team Saturday when it plays host to WVU in a this-is-the-definition-of-hostile night game at Nippert Stadium. Again, it’s not that the Bearcats are suddenly good — remember, they started 6-0 — but that they are suddenly different and, just maybe, dangerous.

The Bearcats, who lead the nation with 22 interceptions, do much of their damage on turnovers. They also were ranked sixth of eight Big East teams in total defense and 63rd in America. Other teams have moved the ball for an average of 377.3 yards against them – not UConn. The thing that was so striking Saturday was how physical they were. This was a smackdown.