AHHHHHHHH HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Wow.  This is just sad.  I’m not sure if this is worth the pay raise, Sean.

Non-Conference Schedule Released

Xavier officially released the non-conference portion of the schedule today and boy will this be an exciting season for our Muskies.  Marquette (1st round of Old Spice Classic), Kansas State, Butler, Cincinnati, Florida, LSU, Wake Forest and either Creighton or Michigan (per the 2nd round of the Old Spice Classic) round out the best match-ups for us fans to look forward to.

This non-conference schedule has to be one of the toughest in the country.  Clearly, there is a bit of unknown with first year head coach Chris Mack.  And much like last year surely there will be at least a couple setbacks.  So it will be interesting to see how Mack and the players react to those potential situations.  But I must admit I am not terribly worried about this.  And besides, today is not the day for that type of speculation.

Now that we have actual teams and dates to look forward to we, or maybe just me, can finally start to look forward to the upcoming season a scant three months away.  What with $ean Miller leaving and having to endure the ensuing coaching change and the bizarre tale of Jordan Crawford’s dunk (Thanks for the free pub Lebron!) this off-season has definitely been memorable.  Some good like the commitments of  Darwin Davis and Jay Canty and one big bad with Miller going to Arizona.  But in the end, if he didn’t wanna stay, then good riddance.

It’s hard not to feel anything but optimism with the direction this program continues to take.  The year in and year out ambition of our non-conference schedules continues to prove to the country that Xavier will not mess around and we are to be taken seriously as a true national player in college basketball.

All hail Mike Bobinski and 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…