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!

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!

Muskies to invade Palestra this time around

Playing St. Joe’s means I get to post one of my all-time favorite photos:

HA!

I’ve been looking forward to this game ever since finding out St. Joe’s would be playing all of its home games at the Palestra this year due to the renovation being undertaken at Alumni Memorial Fieldhouse.  It will be awesome to watch our Muskies play in arguably the most historic gym in the history of basketball.

St. Joe’s has been on a bit of a slide since their brief stay at the top of the conference standings.  After previously winning nine of ten the Hawks are now on a four game losing streak.  Clearly, their only ticket to the NCAA tournament this season will be through an A-10 tournament championship.  But you’d be foolhardy to count the fighting Martelli’s out of any game during A-10 play.  

Not only is Phil Martelli and excellent coach, but St. Joe’s also has the best player in the league this year.  Ahmad Nivins averages a 19 and 11 and is the focus of any defense that comes up against St. Joe’s.  But luckily, St. Joe’s has never employed a style of play that is conducive to exploiting the weaknesses our Muskies possess this year.  

The Hawks have always played a solid half-court man to man defense with an emphasis on forcing tough shots, not forcing turnovers.  If that sounds familiar it should, because it’s basically our philosophy as well.  (Quick Rant:  Those idiots who called into Sean Miller’s show last night to ask why we don’t play zone more often need to open their eyes and look at our style of defense.  It’s called a pack-line defense because we collapse around the ball to make sure no one can drive down the lane unimpeded.  There are actually a lot of zone principles in a pack-line style defense.  Even an amateur’s eyes like mine can figure that out with very little difficulty……ugh)  

St. Joe’s almost never utilizes full-court pressure and only converts 33% of its three-ball attempts.  However, as often is the case with basketball, anytime you have the best player on the floor anything can happen.  

Any who, I just hope our boys realize what an honor it is to play in the Palestra (I’ll bet Jason Love does) because I’ll be very grateful to watch my favorite basketball team play in a gym as hallowed at the Palestra.  Plus, it’s on ESPN2 with a national television audience.  

 

As many of you are aware our main man Mike Bobinski is apart of the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee this year.  I listen to the ESPNU college basketball podcast and it’s usually a good way to kill 20-30 minutes on the days they post a new episode.  The February 23rd version of the podcast features Selection Committee Chairman Mike Slive, who is the SEC Chairman and UCONN’s Athletic Director Jeff Hathaway who also is a member of the  selection committee.  They give some good insights into what the committee goes through not only on selection day itself, but also the days and weeks leading up to it.   Nice to get an idea of  what our boy Mike will be going through in the coming weeks leading up to one of the best days of the year!

Let’s go X!

X looks to get past Niners

I’m not the biggest fan of these Thursday night games, but if that’s what it takes to get us on ESPN then so be it.  

Last year, Charlotte gave us all we could handle and more.  Leemire Goldwire (top 5 best name ever) took advantage of Stan the Man getting into foul trouble by scoring 35 points and forcing X into 22 turnovers.  Luckily, it wasn’t enough as our Muskies gutted out a two point win.  

Halton Arena is a tough place to play and tomorrow night should be no exception with a “white-out” planned to intimidate the boys in navy.  And thank science we don’t have to listen to Charlotte’s play-by-play guy while being forced to watch online like last year…

I think it’s safe to say Charlotte has been a disappointment since entering the A-10 in the 05-06 season.  It’s also safe to say the 49ers are headed to their 2nd losing season in 4 years of A-10 play.  I know I fully expected Charlotte to be challenging for A-10 titles almost as soon as they arrived.  But now they find themselves near the bottom of the A-10 standings and in rebuilding mode.  Although help is certainly on the way next season.

I suppose it’s a good thing to face the three bottom dwellers after losing at Dayton last week, but obviously we need to win all three to restore confidence.  These final six A-10 games are very important for seeding purposes.  And ya know, to extend a certain home court winning streak over a certain school up I-75.  

Even with Charlotte’s struggles this season, this will be a tough game tomorrow night.  Let us not forget Dayton lost at Charlotte a scant week and a half ago.  But hey, we still be ranked, and have a lot going for us.   Let’s just take care of business this week and get back to the Xavier basketball we all know and love.

Let’s go X!

We play Dayton tomorrow night so i guess i better write a post….

Pretty sure the only reason I still hate Dayton is because their fans seem to hate us with a passion that at times is incomprehensible to us X fans.  I’ve also heard too many stories by posters on the message boards saying they will never enter UD Arena again because of the way they were treated.  However, that still won’t deter me from going there. (hopefully next season)  Since I made the little sojourn over to Clifton for the first time this past December I must go to UD Arena.  

The funny thing about Dayton is that they are 21-3, come from a decent to good league and yet no one knows anything about them because they’ve been on television exactly one time this year when the Flyers barely eked out a win over St. Louis on the CBS college sports channel.  Now to their credit they have beaten Marquette, but that is also the only quality win they have as well.  And pretty much the only quality team they’ve faced until 7pm Wednesday night.

And by the way, good job promoting this game espn.  I watch a ton of college hoops, which inevitably means i watch a ton of espn, and have seen precisely zero ads promoting the game.  Of course, it does zero good for the game to be on espn classic in regards to garnering any kind of national audience, but could you at least throw us a line one time after the gazillionth Duke/UNC promo.  Oh well, whatever.

Anyways, Dayton sucks.  They’re not even our main rival.  Derrick Brown and Romain Sato (he speaks 6 languages!) left it for the greener pastures of Xavier.  They wish they were us.  And I find it funny that UD fans make fun of the Blue Blob when they trot out “Rudy the Flyer” and his idiotic look.  And you’re really going to intimidate the boys in navy with your “Beat Xaiver” shirts, which will be the 80th straight game you’ve worn those incredibly creative shirts.

Alright, I’ve said my piece.  Obviously, Dayton has enough talent to beat us tomorrow night, especially since it is on their home court, but I’ll be surprised if they can shoot it well enough to beat us.  A team like Dayton should fall right into the laps of our pack-line defense.  

Let’s go X!

Tonight we get our revenge against the Dukes!

Well, the Dukes of Duquesne anyways.  Last year we kinda blew them out of the water from the word go, but we had a little guy named Drew Lavender to handle the non-stop full court pressure Duquesne employs.  And after committing another 14 turnovers against a Temple team that doesn’t pressure the ball even close to the amount we’ll see later tonight you can go ahead and call me officially  worried.

Also, with Sean Miller saying we are, “playing in spite of him,” (in reference to Tutu) isn’t exactly a vote of confidence.  In addition to that, it’s been weird watching this team struggle with point guard play throughout the year knowing next season we will have an embarrassment of riches at the position with Jordan Crawford and Mark Lyons waiting in the wings.  But Tutu is still a huge key to any success we have come March.  Turnovers HAVE to come down not just for Tutu, but the entire team as a whole.  This will be a good test today to see if we can handle the kind of pressure Duquesne brings to the table.

BJ Raymond is straight killing it right now.  4 games in a row with 20 or more points.  Not since a certain 2-time NBA all-star has that been accomplished at Xavier.  The growth of 4 year players at Xavier continues to amaze and make me proud of X.

Looking forward to tonight and hopefully we’ll get a shot of the snuggie army tonight on the television.

Let’s go X!

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.  

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!

Duke Beckons…

Taking a quick look at Dukes schedule shows that a whopping 28 out of their 31 games are on national television this year.  I mean that is insane.  We Muskie fans are feeling pretty good about the fact that this is the first season ever that every Xavier game will be televised.  I hope Duke fans don’t take the television access for granted because that is a privilege they should feel very lucky about.

But that is what is so odd about coming up against Duke.  I feel like I always see them play the most outside of Xavier by virtue of how many times they are on television throughout the season.  Therefore, it’s not unrealistic for me to say I know enough about the team and what to expect from each player they’ll trot onto the court.  We also know what to expect from Duke as far as their style of play is concerned as well.

They play a very high pressure man-to-man defense.  The purpose of it is to speed up the opponents offense, which forces them into uncharacteristic turnovers and poor possessions.  Obviously, ball control and shot selection will be even more important than they already are for us come 2 o’clock tomorrow afternoon.  Dante and Terrell will need to be spot on in terms of decision making and execution for running the offense.  One of our advantages should be the size difference.  After Zoubek and Singler, Duke does not possess much in terms of the front court.  It is this writer’s opinion that we need to control the glass from start to finish if we are to get the desired result.  Also, defending the three ball will be of paramount importance because of Duke’s affinity for that particular shot.  They seem to be a team where everyone is either hot or not with no in between.  Nolan Smith is their best three ball shooter at 40% with now back-up pg Greg Paulus next best at 34%.  

Duke has three players that scare me.  Kyle Singler will play in the league.  At 6′8″ he is very versatile and obviously their best player.  I would assume our main man Derrick Brown will get the majority of that assignment.  Nolan Smith is obviously the better option at the point for Duke and from what I’ve seen a very solid and gifted player.  He scares me more from an offensive perspective because he will be in Dante’s grill from the word go.  The other kid that scares me is John Scheyer. He’s just one of those guys that gets on your nerves but always seems to burn you one way or another.  It probably has more to do with the fact that he’s so damn skinny and doesn’t appear to have much basketball skill upon first glance.  I know Gerald Henderson is a damn good player as well, but I’ve got faith in BJ to corral him.  

One thing about Duke that peeves more than a few people is the theory that Duke gets way more calls than any other team.  Well, it’s by design.  Just like their defense wants you to speed up your offense to cause turnovers, the offense is designed to draw fouls to get the opponent into foul trouble.  You do this by relentlessly attacking the basket.  And when you have the kind of players Duke has had the past twenty years, you will tend to get the lion’s share of the calls.  Now obviously we got screwed with A Myles back in 2004, but all I’m trying to say is that Duke gets a lot of calls because they attack the basket and force the refs into some kind of call.  

One of our calling cards this year has been our ability to get to the line at a very high rate.  Luckily, the free throw shooting got much better against UC with an 80% effort from the stripe.  It will most likely need to stay there if victory is to be had tomorrow.   

It’s good to know the team is staying at an even keel emotionally.  Derrick Brown’s facebook status earlier in the week was, “you can’t let praise or criticism get to you.  It’s a weakness to get caught up in either one.”  Those words are music to this Muskie fan’s ears!  And you just know CJ is gonna bring it tomorrow as well.  He is such a big game guy.  I love it!  

Let’s go X!

I don’t hate Duke

Everyone seems to think Duke is the anti-christ of the college basketball world.  And not just because of their nickname.  I can see why they are easy to hate.  But that is one of the main reasons why I don’t hate em.  If that makes any sense.  They have a great coach that employs a high pressure style of man-to-man defense with a penchant for shooting the three ball, no hint of possible NCAA violations,  and when it’s all said and done Coach K will easily surpass Bobby Knight as the all-time wins leader.  Sure, I don’t ever root for em to win (except against North Carolina, but those are for personal reasons that only a few of my friends understand) but I don’t get caught up enough in it to care if they win.  

One line of thought I don’t really agree with amongst what seems like at least a good size chunk of the Xavier faithful is that we owe them for what happened in the 2004 Elite Eight.  True, it may seem that way for us Muskie fans, but it is not like that for anyone else.  For the Duke fans, it is just another high profile national spotlight game in a line of many high profile national spotlight games they encounter each and every season.  They probably have no idea of how we feel about them in regards to that game in ‘04, they just know everyone hates em.  And we are still Xavier, so that probably means most of the their fans (at least the casual ones anyway) will look at the match-up for the first time in the next couple of days and think, “wait, Xavier is ranked 7th?  I didn’t know they were any good.”  

None of the players who will see the court Saturday afternoon were on either team in ‘04 as well.  So to say the revenge factor will be in full force come Saturday I think is a bit presumptuous.  But I think it’s safe to say the game means more to the X-men than to Duke.  As is the same with every other team team they play sans UNC and any tournament game.  Duke is a brand name that presents a great opportunity for a school like ours that is looking to form its own brand name.  For the coaches, it is a game of great importance  in mid-December, but there are still many more important games to come.  Sean Miller knows what he is doing and I would imagine is adding a couple wrinkles to the offense specifically to offset Duke’s aforementioned high-pressure defense.

But I just don’t see why we need to hate Duke because they represent a model for which all private schools should at least partially model their programs after.  And is hating a team just because they win most of their games really a good reason to hate them?  I would tend to think not.  Especially when everyone else is under the same rules and regulations.  Let the big state schools like Maryland and UNC do all the hating.  Let’s just worry about winning.  Win the game and we are one step closer to having all the hate thrust upon us because of our winning ways.  I would tend to bet that Duke fans love all the hate that comes their way because it means they are still under everyone’s skin.  And that can only mean one thing.  Winning.  And who the hell doesn’t want that?