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…
