During a coaching career that has spanned 25 years, there's not much University of Cincinnati coach Mark Dantonio hasn't seen on a football field.

Perhaps because of his experience, Dantonio was extremely disappointed, but not shaken, after Saturday's devastating 48-29 loss at Army.

The loss ended Army's 19-game losing streak, the nation's longest, and dropped UC to 2-4 overall, 1-2 in Conference USA heading into an off week.

"I've been at this place before," Dantonio said. "But I've never been at this point as a head coach. Everybody in our program needs to look deep at how they affected this game and what did they do. That's what you do after a loss. You don't point the finger. You look at yourself. We'll bounce back."

Those brave words aside, the UC program is grasping for credibility with five games left in its final season in Conference USA. Next year, the Bearcats head to the Big East, which is supposed to be a huge step up, although its quarterback disputed that notion immediately after the loss to Army.

"What do you mean Big East?" senior Gino Guidugli said when asked about the state of the UC program as it headed for its new conference. "Conference USA could probably beat the Big East."

The Bearcats, shut out by Army during the second half, are 4-11 overall, 2-8 in C-USA since beginning last season with three straight wins.

Two of those wins came against East Carolina and Army, both of which were winless at the time. A third was over Division I-AA Rhode Island, a team the Bearcats struggled to overcome at home.

If this program is making progress, it's difficult to detect.

Sometimes coaches will say in retrospect that they saw a loss coming, but Dantonio said he had no inkling that such a meltdown was about to occur against Army.

"We had a good week of practice," Dantonio said. "We came here focused. This was a critical game for our season. We could have gone 3-3 into the bye week, 2-1 in the conference. We made that point. I felt like our players respected Army because of the tough games they've had in the last two or three years with them. We just didn't get it done."

Halfway through the season, the Bearcats already know they're probably not going to win the conference championship, nor are they likely to play in a bowl game.

"We're going through some of the problems we had last year," said senior linebacker Jamar Enzor, "not playing up to our potential, playing to the level of our opponents. It's really backfiring on us this season like it did last season.

"We've still got a chance, maybe not at a conference championship, but we've still got a chance to end our season on a good note."

That won't be easy. The Bearcats' final five games are against opponents with a combined record of 17-5.

"Everybody's got to stay together," Guidugli said. "We've got a long stretch of games coming up. If we don't get our heads right and get this corrected, we're going to get blown out every game."

E-mail bkoch@enquirer.com