Hey Everybody! X is 17-2 and ranked 10th in the country!

HA! Sean is a happy camper!

Beating LSU on the road was a huge win for the Muskies. Should be a big confidence boost for the boys in navy. As an aside, should we fans push to havethe boys wear the navy blue unis at home? I love our road unis and it would make us different by wearing em at home. And I always like being different.

But anyways, going into Baton Rouge was always going to be a tricky proposition as LSU was hungry to get that “signature” win on their NCAA tournament resume. Plus, it came at an odd time of the year since both teams were already ankle deep in conference action. But our boy’s showed a lot of toughness and resolve in gutting out a ten point win.

The story for me was the down low play of Kenny Frease and Jason Love. They combined to go 10-13 from the field with 22 points and 11 ball-boards. Although I’d be very remiss not to mention Derrick Brown’s continued stellar play. Scoring 22 points on 7-11 shooting including 3-4 from with the three ball to go along with 9 rebounds is stellar play in my book. When D Brown hits that three ball it’s a thing of beauty. High-arcing shots are just prettier to watch go through that net.

Once again, the A-10 becomes our top priority. We’re 5-0 in the league coming into Wednesday night’s game against Charlotte at the beautiful Cintas Center. Definitely are in the driver’s seat but also St. Joes’s has yet to lose a game and Dayton, Richmond and Temple all have just one loss.

But I want to take this space to say just how stupid some of the message board talk has been of late in regards to the A-10. To say that the A-10 is holding us back is down right ludicrous. Both of today’s polls have us at #10 in the country. I mean, how far back can it really be holding us? If a team like Gonzaga can make it up to 4th in the polls when they come from a decidedly lesser conference than the A-10, then what is all the bitching about?

I mean seriously, woe is us. We are 5-0 in the conference and clearly have the best team. But that doesn’t mean we’ll win every game. UD, Temple, URI, and St. Joe’s all have enough talent to beat us and maybe even a couple others on the right day. But do they have enough talent to beat us over a 16 game conference schedule? I highly doubt it.

And of course I want the conference to get better, but it’s not like Xavier can do anything about it. All we can do is keep winning. Just remember, GW went 16-0 in the conference a scant three seasons ago and now look at em. Obviously, I’m not saying that is going to happen to us, cuz I don’t think it will, but just realize it doesn’t take a whole lot of time for things to turn south and in a hurry.

We are in an incredibly good spot right now. The past 15 years has seen a decidedly upward motion for Xavier basketball and that coincides directly with our affiliation with the A-10 conference. And it’s not like other conferences are chomping at the bit to get us to come to their side. So let’s calm down people. We’ve been a game away from the final four twice in the past five years. I can think of more than a few schools who would like have that distinction….

Change we’ve been believing in!

Q&A with Bonnies Basketball Blog

With the Muskies headed to Olean, New York to take on the revamped Bonnies  we here at the MB decided to ask  the guys over at Bonnies Basketball Blog a few questions concerning Wednesday nights game.  I answered a few questions for them as well if you’re curious to see what they wanted to know about X.

Musketeer Blogosphere:  I think I speak for almost every Xavier fan when I say I know almost nothing about the Bonnies.  Tell me about the team.  What is their style of play?  What defense do you predominantly employ?

Bonnies Basketball Blog:  The Bonnies are led by their interior duo of Maurice Thomas and Andrew Nicholson.  Nicholson is one of the best freshman in the country, he was recently mentioned in an article on cbssportsline which discussed him as a player to watch.  The Bonnies are weak at the point, as Malcolm Eleby struggles to score and at times to take care of the ball.  Ray Blackburn is hurt for us, he plays with a lot of heart and sometimes not as much with his head.  Chris Matthews is a good shooter who at times can take the ball to the hole and score.  Jonathan Hall is a player that is versatile and does a lot of good things, but can also do a lot of bad things and can lose his temper.  Michael Davenport is a young player who is athletic.  D’lancy Carter, Daequan Cook, and Tyler Benson also play limited minutes, and are pretty much non-factors.  

The Bonnies employ a basic motion offense, and change up defenses.  They most often play man-to-man. 

MB:  Most Xavier fans are aware of Mark Schmidt and the years he spent as an assistant under the late Skip Prosser.  Are the Bonnie fans excited about the future with Schmidt as coach?  Does he have the full backing of the fans like my main man Sean Miller?

BBB:  Bonnies fans are ecstatic with Coach Schmidt.  Speaking for myself and both of my parents who are Bonas alums, we believe that Coach Schmidt is the one to take this program to the next level.  Coach Schmidt is a good coach and person, and does his job well and with a passion that was not seen before he arrived. 

MB:  Who do we Muskie fans need to be worried about when the Bonnies have the ball?  A quick glance at the season stats shows 5 players averaging at least 10 points a game.  What has been the key to that kind of balanced scoring?

BBB:  Xavier needs to defend the interior against the Bonnies.  If the Bonnies are allowed to get into the lane, Xavier will have problems with them.  Xavier needs to make the Bonnies a perimeter team in order to beat them.  The Bonnies have balanced scoring because they do not have one scorer who can take over the game. 

MB:  I’m very interested to see what the atmosphere in the Reilly Center will be like Wednesday night.  Are you all expecting a sell out?  Historically, I know it’s a very tough place to play.

 BBB:  The Reilly Center will be sold out.  I don’t know if you remember this, but when Xavier had the nation’s longest winning streak 8 years ago it was the Bonnies that ended that streak at the RC.  On any given night, especially with the students in town, the Bonnies can win in that building.  It is a very tough place to play. 

Thanks again to the guys at Bonnies Basketball Blog for answering our questions.  

XU improves to 4-0 in the Atlantic 10, still needs to improve

At least he can put this one in…

 

The Xavier Men’s Basketball Team was favored to beat the La Salle Explorers by 12 and won by 20, but shot just 52.8% from the free throw line and still had 15 turnovers (a significant improvement from the 22 TO’s against Rhody).  Without Jason Love’s effort from the charity stripe (a perfect 8-8), the team shot a whopping 39.2%, which is a huge embarrassing failure.  Good to see the Sean Miller Free Throw Club is paying off… Hopefully we will see a Jason Love-like improvement with Kenny and Jamal at the line, as Love only shot 56% in his first two seasons and is now one of our best.  I know its easy to complain about poor free throw shooting, but for a team that gets to the line as much as we do (2nd in the country up until before yesterday’s game with about 30 attempts per game) missing that many only means we are giving the ball right back.  And we do that enough as it is.

But I don’t want to be a total downer, we did still manage to win by 20 despite the above complaint worthy statistics, Bradley looks to be nice and cozy in his role on the team, the rebounding was there, I didn’t want to kill any referees, The Musketeers outshot their opponents 52% to 41%, and even Joe Hughes got him some.  And with that, I do believe I have summed up about all that I could possibly have taken from that game.

We will be partaking in a short Q&A with the Bonnies Basketball Blog sometime before the game where we will discuss the upcoming matchup.  Apparently, the Bonnies found a good player from Canada that isn’t Steve Nash to play fior them.  So this should be interesting. 

Seacrest out.

Appreciating Dante Jackson

For most players, and people for that matter, when one is asked to take what seems like a step backwards it leads to a negative reaction more times than not.  It’s just human nature.  While inserting Terrell, er, Tutu into the the starting the lineup was the right move and will no doubt make the Muskies a better team for the long run, the silver lining was seeing how Dante would react to coming off the bench.  

Well that question has been answered and we Muskie fans could not be any happier.  Since becoming the sixth man New Year’s Eve against Robert Morris Dante’s stats and play have noticeably improved.  Our biggest complaints for the first part of this season were the number of turnovers committed but I think most of us were willing to forgive Dante because he was a two guard playing the point, which is always difficult to do.  

The first 11 games saw Dante commit 28 turnovers while the past four have seen Dante commit just 3.  That is a drop from 2.5 to .75 turnovers a game.  He is also averaging 3.2 assists on the year, but the past four games has seen an average of 4.5 assists from Dante.  Those are probably the two most important stats for a point guard because they show how well he is managing the game.  

As for other stats, his steals and rebounds have also gone up the past four games compared to his season averages.  His minutes have decreased by a couple minutes, but that can probably be attributed to three blowout victories methinks.  Point average has stayed the same, but he has shown the ability to handle the scoring load during brief stretches of certain games.  The shootout coming to mind most notably.

One of my favorite things about Dante is his demeanor on the court.  Never seems to get too high or too low from an emotional standpoint, but plays with great passion as was on display against St. Louis when he dove for the ball at half court when the SLU player thought he was going to simply pick the ball back up and re-start their possession.  It eventually led to an assist for Dante and an easy dunk for Kenny.  I don’t recall him ever complaining to the refs either, which I can fully dig as well.

Now, it has definitely helped Dante to have Tutu come along so quickly because it allows Dante to go back to his natural position of the 2 guard.  But he is still playing considerable time at the point and will continue to play a very important role in that position throughout the rest of the year starting with Thursday night at Rhode Island.  

I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention Dante’s defense will continue to become more potent as well.  Sean has said he is our best on the ball defender and not having quite as much offensive responsibility should only go towards helping the defensive side of the ball. 

In my opinion Dante and Jason Love are the glue guys of this team and we need to continue to be appreciative of everything they bring to the table night in and night out for the Musketeers.  Looking forward to Thursday night…

Let’s go X!

X off to good A-10 start

Which is more than I can say about our not so friendly neighbors up I-75…

This Fordham win was a perfect preview for the rest of our A-10 road schedule.  X is going to get everyone’s best shot on the road.  Both the fans and players will be up for it and it is a great test mentally for the guys wearing navy blue.  That’s why it was probably a good thing to start off against the weakest link of the A-10.  Rose Hill Gym is the oldest gym in use by a D-1 basketball team.  

Naturally, that makes for an odd atmosphere.  Our guys probably weren’t used to hearing everything going on in the gym.  But when you out rebound your opponent by 23 that usually makes for an easy win.

Teams with small gyms like that can have a good home court advantage.  I watched St. Mary’s play at home against Santa Clara recently and they have a very small gym as well.  But the difference was that the place was packed and the fans are right on top of you, which can make for an intimidating atmosphere.   But when your team is 2-11 I suppose it’s tough to really get up and be excited even it the 16th ranked team in the country comes to town.

Rhody will have that aforementioned atmosphere in place Thursday night in that the students will be rocking and their place is more like the Cintas Center than a high school gym like Fordham’s.  Rhode Island should have beaten Duke early this year, but succumbed late at Cameron Indoor.  Obviously, we did not do too well against Duke but that won’t have any bearing on this game.  But we’ll worry about Rhody later this week.  Right now, let’s just be thankful for the 415,323th time we aren’t our neighbors to the north.

We are already half way done with the regular season. sigh…….   Oh well, the more games we play the sooner March (and April!) gets here so I’ll take it.

Let’s go X!

A-10 season begins in earnest….

Sans a trip to Baton Rouge later this month, our full attention is now on the Atlantic 10 conference.  To kick things off, St Louis comes to town Thursday night for an 8 o’clock tip.  I doubt I need to remind anyone reading this that St. Louis has had our number (to an extent) since they joined the A-10.  In fact, the Billikens still hold a 3-2 record against us since the 05-06 season.   

Liddel and Lisch have seemingly been there close to a decade.  Like Miami, Rick Majerus will slow things down to a crawl.  Just look at their season stats.  The Billikens only score 60 points per game, but only give up 58.  Not surprisingly, they do not shoot the ball to well.  41% from the field and a paltry 30% with the three ball.  We are also getting 7 more rebounds on average per game and with all the missed shots that will be seen in the beautiful Cintas Center Thursday night one would think that will be to great benefit for the Muskies.

I still don’t know what to make of the rest of the A-10.  With the exception of Dayton, every other team in the conference has at least one loss that makes you go, “what the hell?” and in most team’s cases it’s more than one.  And Dayton’s schedule has not exactly been stellar.  Hence why they only have one loss and are not ranked.  

IMO, I think 12 wins should be the goal as that should be enough for the conference crown and in turn should be the goal.  I think it’s dangerous to expect more wins than that because of our offense.  It’s just not prolific enough to expect the same 14-2 record that was accomplished last year.  But here’s to hoping I’m wrong!  (ya know, in the sense that we actually win more games than I expect)

Let’s go X!

My trip to Virginia

One of my cousin’s just happens to live in Charlottesville, VA.  Naturally I just had to make the 8 hour drive down to Virginia to watch my Muskies play as well.  Add in a tour of Monticello for this history buff and it’s a 16 hour round trip well worth taking.  Plus, I kinda like my cousin as well and it was great to see her.

Charlottesville is a town chalk full of history with the obvious focal point being Monticello.  Thomas Jefferson will forever be linked to the town as he is also the founder of the University of Virginia.  But I was unaware two other presidents also made the Charlottesville area their home as well in James Madison and James Monroe.  Meriwether Lewis, better known for being half of the exploration duo Lewis and Clark, also called Charlottesville home.  More recently, these guys also formed in this small town in Virginia.

Representing in Monticello’s backyard….

Me right outside Thomas Jefferson’s grave couple hours before game time.

John Paul Jones Arena is only a couple years old and it shows.  The place was spectacular in my opinion.  The brick finish fit right in with the rest of campus.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

The inside was very nice, clean and mostly uncomplicated as well.  Here’s a picture I took from our seats.  They didn’t feel as high up as the picture below would seem to indicate.  

Got there a bit early as you can see…

I was a bit disappointed in the Wahoo crowd.  The place might be a bit too big for the school’s fan base.  Not so much because they don’t have the fans, but because of Charlottesville’s location.  It’s a pretty small town in the middle of no where.  A 14,000 seat capacity is probably a bit too much to ask for consistent sell-outs throughout the season.  Of course, it didn’t help that the student section was far from full capacity as most were still on break for the holidays.

As for the game itself, I doubt you need me to go over much, but I thought we played really good defense throughout sans the final 5 minutes.  I feel bad for Walsh, but it is perhaps his absence that has allowed Brad Redford to begin to show his outrageous shooting ability and get into a groove courtesy of those few extra minutes he is now getting (thanks Shawn).  

After two tough losses it is great to see the team get back to their winning ways and round into shape just in time for conference season to start up this Thursday at home in the beautiful Cintas Center.

Let’s go X!