Oh Well…

When Coolio shot that ball with about 50 seconds left on the clock, I was relieved.  I actually vocally let out a “Yessss!” because Derrick Brown had a hand in his face, he was just about at NBA-range, and someone obviously replaced the regulation-sized rims with smaller ones for the second half.  I mean, no one was hitting anything for either team.  There was NO WAY that ball was going in, yeah?

Oh well…

It was one hell of a shot.  And then it was one hell of a defensive play.  Add one more cliched “what-if” for X fans with D Brown just barely stepping out of bounds after a defensive stop whislt up by 2 with 1:30 left to play.  But it happened,  and Pitt took advantage of a mistake when it mattered the most.  They won, they deserved to win, and they deserve their very first Elite Eight appearance, because Greg Oden didn’t push anyone into the third row right before it happened. 

Despite what EVERYONE but X fans said it would be, this was a very evenly-matched game.  Both teams played tremendous defense.  Kenny Frease’s defense appeared to have improved ten-fold and is enough to get me already thinking about October.  Part of me wished Coach gave him more minutes in the second half just to get that big Massilon-bred body of his in front of Blair, who appeared to just steam-roll through whoever had position on him for something like 107 rebounds I think it was. 

Speaking of the second half, why did we have to have a half time last night?  We would have won by 20 if we skipped that nonsensical break after 20 minutes.  That was the sexiest defense I have ever seen.  Stupid dumb basketball rules… I mean as soon as the new 20 minutes began, the Muskies forgot how to hold onto the ball and we began seeing the silly turnovers that was there for a lot of this season.  Combine that and the ball just not going in for about 8 minutes and the momentum was officially out the effing window.

The thing about this game that bugs me is that even with the lack of offensive execution, X still could have won.  It was ours to lose.  Personally, I blame the economy.

Anysway, my heart goes out to our BJ and CJ.  These guys were on a mission in the first half of this game, willing us to a comfortable lead at the break.  It’s always tough to see your seniors go out in their last effort, but thus is the life of a college basketball fan… unless your an Ohio State fan (which probably means you didn’t go there).  Then you just watch your underachieving 7 footers leave EVERY year. 

Well, I lost about 5-6 years of my life watching this game.  My heart was lifted and then dropped like those ridiculous rides at amusement parks that I do not go on.  I lost more hair and I flipped off some old guys who were mockingly cheering for Pitt because myself and the other X fans were cheering so loudly for our boys (classy, I know).  But this was another great experience for Xavier, and there are many positive things to come away with after this season.

I just really wanted to post this picture.

Who would have thought we were going to make it this far and have a great chance to beat the no. 1 seed in the third round?  What that says to me is that we can now all EXPECT this team to be there every year.  And what that also means is that we undoubtedly  have one of the best coaching staffs in the NCAA, PERIOD.  Making the tournament was all we asked from this team.  They got us another A10 Championship, earned a 4 seed to the dance, and made it into the Sweet Sixteen again.  XU will never be Cinderella again.  Not with the formula we have.  We are all witnessing this program advance to another level before our very eyes.  We are obviously not among the very elite of the field, but we are not that far behind.  There are many in our rear view mirrors, and they are getting further behind. 

So here’s to the best program in Ohio.  I can’t wait to dance next year. 

We Can Beat These Guys Damnit!

I think it’s pretty safe to say that Xavier is playing with house money at this point in the tournament.  And that means we could be a very dangerous team tomorrow night in Boston.  Almost all of the pressure is on Pitt and the fact that they have not been to the Elite 8 since 1974.  And with all of their recent regular season success I can’t imagine this wouldn’t seep into the Panthers’ minds at some point before or during the game.  

Obviously, most of the Pittsburgh talk centers around their version of the “big 3.”  LeVance Fields, Sam Young and DeJuan Blair are as imposing a threesome as any in the world of men’s college basketball.  I’m not sure Xavier can really key into just one player in order to pull off the upset.  

DeJuan Blair is probably the toughest matchup in all the land.  Watching him get the better of Hasheem Thabeet in their win at UConn earlier in the season was more than impressive.  Plus, after the game he did an on the court interview with Jay Bilas and the two were basically eye level.  I know Blair is listed at 6′7″ but unless someone can tell me otherwise I doubt Jay Bilas is that height so I’d have to imagine Blair isn’t even as tall as his listed height.  And being an undersized center to begin with makes his exploits this season all that much harder to comprehend.  

I’d assume Jason, Kenny, and Jamel will all see time on him.  That’s 15 fouls to use on a player that shot 61% from the foul line on the year.  And it’s not exactly a secret that the best way to get Blair out of the game is to get him into foul trouble.  In all of Pitt’s loses this year that was the overriding theme.  If we can pull this off that would be great but can’t say I’m expecting it.  Not sure we have the penetrating prowess to pull it off.  It will probably take a couple cheap ones courtesy of the refs and I would whole heartily accept them.  

Sam Young is a great player.  At 6′6″ one would assume CJ and BJ, and perhaps Dante will get the brunt of the minutes guarding Young.  I would prefer CJ because we need BJ as fresh as possible on the offensive end of the court throughout the duration of the game.  BJ will need to be a factor for us scoring points in order for us to win methinks.  Back to Young, I’d imagine containment of him will be paramount.  We certainly cannot afford to let him score 30 points (on 12-20 shooting no less) like he did against OK State Sunday afternoon.  

The field general for this team is LeVance Fields.  Young and Blair may get a majority of the national headlines, but when the game is on the line the ball is in Field’s more than capable hands.   Hopefully, the groin injury he’s been playing through for almost the entire month of March will keep him off his game just enough to affect the outcome.  Couple that with the stifling defense Dante Jackson will bring to the table and this is the match-up I am hopeful will be the most successful for the good guys in navy.   

This may be the homer in me coming out, but I feel as though we match up the best with Pitt compared to the teams in the bottom of our bracket.  We both play half-court man-to-man defense and a disciplined half-court offense that only looks to run when the opportunity presents itself.  Pitt is also known for its bruising style of play, but I’m hopeful we can take it and then dish it back out accordingly.  

We have a big team.  One of the reasons I like starting Dante over Terrell is the fact that our starting line-up then goes 6′5″, 6′6″, 6′6″, 6′8″, and 6′9″.  That is a formidable front line for almost every team in America.  Now I know Blair plays much bigger than his aforementioned listed height of 6′7″ but take him out of the game and Pitt suddenly loses a lot of its force on the interior.  Hopefully that will happen, but I have a certain amount of faith we can get it done even with Blair in the game.  

But hey, we are in the effing Sweet 16!  I believe our boys are going to take the court with nothing to lose and play with a general looseness we may not have seen this season.  (hey, a boy can dream)  And let us not forget it was us that made the Elite 8 last year.  The core of this team has been in this position before and taken advantage of it.  Let’s hope that will translate into more success tomorrow night.  

Let’s go X!

Addressing the haters….

One of the weird things about being a Xavier fan is the apparent fact that we get more love from the national media than the local media.  I listened to Lance McAlister yesterday via the podcast and he could not believe how much backlash there was towards our success.  Which in and of itself is not surprising since Xavier has a decidedly small minority of fans in Cincinnati.  And I don’t expect UC fans to jump on the bandwagon, because I would never root for UC under any circumstances as well.  

It’s the rationale that drives me insane in the haters drive to belittle us.  Since we beat a 13 and a 12 seed that seems to somehow diminish our accomplishment of getting to the Sweet 16.  

I would imagine I speak for all Muskie fans when I say, “Sorry I’m not sorry.  No really, I apologize for our highly successful non-conference results and winning the conference title to EARN a 4 seed.  And I’m sorry Wisconsin didn’t bow down to Florida State after everyone and their brother picked the ‘Noles to get into the Sweet 16.  And I’m REALLY sorry we then had the audacity to beat the Badgers and reach the Sweet 16 for the second straight year.”

Ugh, why do I care so much?  

But ya know what?  This is one of the reasons I love Xavier.  There is something about having a small but very passionate and smart fan base that appeals to me in a very large way.  And X does not recruit players who want the attention.  We recruit players that want to WIN, period.  And that is more than evident from the quotes and demeanor of this and past year’s teams.  This was a quote from Derrick Brown I found off of Lance’s blog.  

“You can’t explain it to the outside world because they’re not in here, they don’t understand, People might think that it’s about stats and yadda yadda yadda, but we all care about each other and we got the job done. We’re going to the Sweet 16, baby!”

That pretty sums it up for this Xavier fan.  I doubt there are too many players around the country that think this way about their program and team.

And to all the haters I say, “Meh.”  

Tomorrow, we shall delve into the world of Pittsburgh basketball and our perception of how to pull off the upset.

Let’s go X!

Sweet… Pitt it is.

XU has advanced to their second straight Sweet Sixteen appearance for the first time ever to face off against Coach Miller’s Alma Mater Pittsburgh,  and I couldn’t be drunker happier.  The general discussion with Mr. Golfitup and I before the game was that this was going to be one of those first-to-sixty games, and this was exactly the case as XU won 60-49.

Xavier was the team to reach it first, and they did so with suffocating defense on the other end.  There was spread out scoring (signature Sean Miller coaching), big-time plays from just about everybody (except for Brad Redford’s 7-minute One Trillion), and did I mention The Muskies played with suffocating defense?  Well they did.  Wisconsin only shot 3-20 behind the 3-point arc, and only shot 28% total from the field. The biggest defensive play to me was a HUGE block by Kenny Frease all the way out to the 3-point line with about 7 minutes left.  He extended out to a guard and threw a shot back that could have tied this game, where every point was so important until X was finally able to pull away with 2 or 3 minutes to go.  But that isn’t meant to take anything away from the D the rest of the team played.  It was a thing of beauty.

Dante was a pain im the Badger Ass, Jamel’s 18 minutes included some of the biggest momentum plays of the game, Kenny had his best all-around game despite still strugling from the free throw line, and I drank Budweiser.  The thing that shocks me is that some things that I thought would be our Achilles  Heel in the tournament, especially in a back-and-forth close game like this did not spell our demise.

The Badgers shot about 13% better than us from the line with the help of some odd foul calls in the first half, and they only had 7 TO’s compared to our 14.  But it seemed as if every Wisconsin possession went down to the last 3 seconds of the shot clock before a bad shot was forced up or, you know, the occasional make.  Their epically slow style just appeared to fall right into the pack-line trap as they could hardly get anything by us,  and our Muskies had just a little more than enough offense to advance to the Sweet 16… again, bitches.

Now I get to nervously watch another huge game on Thursday, but until then, I will celebrate.  And I wonder how many times we will get to see this until and during our game against Pitt.  SEND IT IN JAMEL!!!

***also, did anyone else notice D Brown in the post-game interview say that they weren’t going to let CJ and BJ play their last games?  As in this wouldnt have been his last anyways?  I liked the way that sounded…

Muskies look to defeat secondary rivals for A-10 crown…

Before the season started I wrote what I thought should be the goals of the 2008-2009 version of the Xavier Musketeers.  Those goals were to win the A-10 regular season title and get into the NCCA tournament.  Now the latter of those two goals already appears to be in the bag.  And that’s all a fan can truly hope for in regards to entering a season in a supposed “rebuilding” year.  Although I highly doubt any of the players and coaches would agree with that sentiment.

Now in regards to the first goal of the season that means a lot is riding on tomorrow’s night game at the beautiful Cintas Center.  Dayton comes in off what many would say was a must-win game at home versus Temple, while X is coming off a hard fought road win at the Palestra against St. Joe’s.  Methinks I don’t need to remind anyone the conference title is on the line and we want that third straight A-10 title!  

Obviously, Jimmy Carter’s mug isn’t on this post just for kicks.  And I doubt  I need to remind anyone about the last time Dayton beat Xavier in Cincinnati.  Now one would have to reason that Dayton will eventually  beat X in Cincy, but it’s been so long since it happened I would think it’s just human nature for Dayton players to wonder if they’ll ever win at Xavier.  So while it may happen at some point I certainly don’t want it to happen tomorrow night or anytime soon for that matter.  Reminds me of  a very moving speech I find poignant at the moment.

Hell Oui!

Let’s go X!