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…

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!

Sean Miller’s post-game radio comments live-blog

I want to see what the mind-set of Coach and the team is right now.  Obviously, it will not be good and I don’t anticipate Sean sugar coating anything…

Sadly, it’s almost a moral victory that we lost by 18.  And it doesn’t matter that we outscored them in the second half.  Anyone who doesn’t think Duke let off the gas a little bit is insane.  Plus, I’m sure Coach laid down the gauntlet at half time.

Byron, (and I’m paraphrasing, actually just know that I’m paraphrasing everything from here on out…) “Can’t dwell on this too long.”

Coach is here…..

“Give Duke a lot of credit.  Scheyer and Henderson shot the ball incredibly well.  Lucky to only lost by 18.  By far the superior team and could have lost by 30.”

“Easy to say we weren’t ready.  Butler and Duke are the top two rated teams on our schedule right now.”

“Try to take it one 4 minute war at a time.  The first two segments we’re down by 20 minutes and its inescapable to not feel that way.  Able to get by us at every position from an on the ball standpoint.  Duke could easily be a final four team.”

Byron, “thought D Brown came out in second half.”

Coach, “Liked the way D Brown came out for second half.  Jason brought his lunch pail today.  Tutu needs to realize he can’t drive on anyone.  Lesson learned for everyone today.  Find out about everyone in this type of situation.  Taking lose against an opponent like this means we have a lot of lessons learned.”

Byron, “Did finals play a part in this?”

Coach, “Had all week to work, had  good practices this week, credit Duke, they are in a different category today than they have been all year.”

Byron felt Sean wasn’t too disappointed considering what happened.  Time to refocus, gotta travel and then practice come Monday.  Basically a 48 hour turnaround before Butler come Tuesday.

I’ll be in the beautiful Cintas Center Tuesday night.  It better be a packed house cuz the Muskies need us more than ever.  Like Byron said, right now Butler is the second best team on paper we will play this year.  So come on Muskie fans, let’s pack the Cintas Center and give the support our players need now more than ever!

Let’s go X!

Memo to rest of A-10: Win Some Damn Games!

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but thank science for Dayton right now.  They are the only other team in our conference that appears to be worth a damn.  Although for their sake, it’s a good thing they beat Marquette because they have no more possible quality wins left on the out of conference schedule.  But we are not here to belittle Dayton.  Well, not today anyways.

We all knew Fordham wouldn’t be good, but UMass and Charlotte have been the real disappointments so far this year.  Charlotte has gone downhill ever since they joined the A-10 along with St. Louis.  At least UMass is implementing a new system, but they probably don’t have the personnel to be successful yet.  

I don’t think it’s an unrealistic goal for the A-10 to be the best conference outside of the BCS schools year in and year out, but at the rate this season is going, the A-10 will be lucky to be the in the top ten of conferences nationally.  That’s kind of pathetic.  

The state of the A-10 is seemingly always a topic of conversation on the message boards.  I think being apart of the A-10 has been a great thing for Xavier.   Hell, we are ranked 9th and 10th right now for crying out loud!  It’s more than a little fun to be the big fish in a little pond.  That’s why I’d be very apprehensive about joining a bigger conference (like that’s happening anytime soon…..).  Ya just gotta be careful what you wish for.  Our program is in an incredibly good spot right now and we need to be grateful for that.  The future looks very bright as the X machine continues to chug along.  One of the reasons for that is our conference affiliation.  And just for the record, anyone who thinks the A-10 will be a cake walk this year is out of their mind.  We will have the proverbial target on our back and every road game will bring out the best in the opposing school’s fans and teams.  

Would contraction help out in terms of the overall quality of the league?  Maybe.  But the only team I think everyone would agree on getting rid of is Fordham.  So it’s hard to say.  I can say for the short-term that the rest of the league (sans Dayton) needs to win some effing games!  

Be back tomorrow with a quick preview of Ohio as I got the chance to watch them play Sunday against Louisville.

XU Remains Unbeaten, Shows Weaknesses

Toldedo’s Finest

Coach is correct in saying that his team is not the 14th best team in the nation. There is no way they are gonna even contend with the likes of Duke, or anyone in March for that matter, with that many turnovers and being that slow on defense. For all those that heard his post game interview, you could just feel the angry dissapointment he had towards his players like my mom did when I got in trouble for giving my gym teacher the finger in the 4th grade for pulling me out of a soccer game in class.

It seems like no one is trying to push the ball up court when we are getting pressured. I know it is quite the setback not having a “true PG”, but it’s also scary to see a lack of moxy to push that ball passed the timeline. BJ is fersure not the best ball handler on the team, but seems like the only one lately who tries to push it himself. I am just sick of seeing guys catch a pass and just stand there and let three guys crowd him while he looks for someone else. I mean I understood last year when we had issues moving it up against Tennessee, cuz they were athletic as hell and played the nastiest defense we saw all season long. But letting Auburn come back to within 7 after being up 22 by giving up 37 points in 12 minutes…37 points in 12 minutes…means something needs to be fixed.

Conditioning cannot be the issue, because Coach subs in and out enough to keep the Muskie Men fresh enough to run (although I’m sure there will be extra running in practice just in case). Perhaps they just lack the eye of the tiger, and need a training montage or two. We all know that Toledo’s Tyrone Kent would not have scored 37 pts, most of which came in the second half, with Stanley Burrell in his grill, and we also know that SB was the most passionate player possibly ever to lace up some Nikes for XU. So maybe we are just lacking a little bit of “GRRRRR”.

That said, we somehow are still 7-0, and without BJ’s career highs last night, we might not be celebrating Coach’s 100^th victory today. A positive that can be taken is that we finally shot well behind the arc, with even Kenny gettin’ in on it. But we are still garbage from the charity stripe, so I urge Coach to get in touch with Mark Price and have him coach the boys to shoot the free and easy ones. How much better would these wins look score-wise if we shot like, say, 75% instead of 66%?

Coach also mentioned the starting lineup perhaps looking a little different by next week’s game against the Bobcats of THE Ohio University. I am not too sure how it would or should change, but perhaps Bradley Redford will get the nod partly because of his improved play on the court, and mostly because of Dante’s 8 turnovers.  My guess would be McClean for CJ, cuz CJ played pretty poorly.  Irregardlessly, there is a whole week for Coach to whip the boys into shape for the next game, then the much-anticipated Crosstown Shootout. I’m so excited, I hardly want to get back to work in this cubicle…

So let’s all practice our free throws and harness our chi for next Wednesday. Ledgewood out.

I don’t think Auburn is aware they have a basketball team

Auburn is a big public university in Auburn, Alabama.  They play before nearly 90,000 fans every Saturday at Jordan-Hare Stadium during football season.  Now I know football is king in the south, but at Auburn it appears to be the only sport.  In three of their four home games this year, those same supposed fans of the school have not even filled their 10,500 seat gym to half its capacity.  Ugh.  Really?  I can’t stand the SEC.  Kentucky is literally the only school in the conference that gives a damn about basketball.  No wonder they have all those SEC Championships.  This is reminding me of Georgia just a little too much…  Here is a sample about Auburn from that same post as well:  

“I was listening to a local radio show here in Louisville and the host said a reporter who covers Auburn sports was told to not cover the SEC men’s basketball tournament and instead stay in Auburn to cover a freaking spring football SCRIMMAGE!”

And if you research the Auburn blogs/fan sites you find virtually nothing on the basketball team as well.  Geezle, we better not lose to them.  Luckily, we outlasted Georgia in the tournament and hopefully we’ll do a bit better than that Wednesday night at the beautiful Cintas Center where we damn sure fill the place up beyond the halfway mark.   Not that that’s anything to really gloat about.  But the fact of the matter is that Auburn has an insanely larger fan base than us and that makes their paltry attendance numbers so far this season PATHETIC!

Thankfully, Dante just had leg cramps because he may be the least expendable player on the team with Tutu out right now.  Let’s all start praying to science that he’ll be back in time for the Crosstown Shootout on the 13th.  

In the meantime, the half-court offense continues to be, as Sean has put it, “a work in progress,” but it’s always difficult to gauge much of anything against Miami.  It’s just the way they play.  Grind it out half-court offense + in your face man-to-man defense = what most would deem an ugly game that in many ways we were lucky to win.  Free throws and half-court offense will continue to be our main areas of focus.  However, still can’t afford to slack off on rebounding and defense.  (Like Sean and the staff would ever let that happen)

But hey, we’re 6-0, ranked 14th in both polls and can get Sean his 100th career victory against the Tigers (or War Eagles or Plainsmen, seriously, how many nicknames do you need?) Wednesday night.  Let’s not fret just yet Muskie fans.  Let’s wait until we gots something to fret about (namely, a loss).  Because there have been way more pros than cons so far to start this season….

Until next time,

Let’s go X!