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…

Who’s ready to start drinking heavily?

Halftime, Duke 55 Xavier 24

You’re my only friend right now…..

I Had an Awesome Time

Well the Musketeers are 1-0. I made the trip down to the Queen City with my family for my dad’s birthday to watch the guardians of the king take on the gigantic elephants. After somewhere between a few and a lot of blue beers from Ryan’s Pub, I was ready for the game. Watching the boys play IPFW could only show us so much, so here is what i took from the game:

• Findlay is better than IPFW
• Kenny Frease is big. Very big.
• McClean and Brown will be back and forth highlight reels
• Not only can Redford shoot, but he has very good basketball IQ
• XU’s defense may just be as good as it was last year
• We need to get better at the charity stripe…a higher field goal % than free throw %… remember how good Stan and Drew were from the line?

Kenny Frease is as good as advertised. I don’t think anyone in the Atlantic 10 will be able to contain him in the post. And on D, it seemed like anytime the ball was shot anywhere near him never had a chance. I heard a lot of chatter about him starting before too long, but I think last year showed us that it doesn’t matter where he is at the opening tip (Josh Duncan). It was just so exciting to see such a monster in the home whites. In just 20 minutes, he picked up 12 points, 7 boards, and three blocks. Also, I’m pretty sure he ate someone.

Again, not much to take away from an ass-whoopin’ ‘cept a W, but it is good to see that we were just too much for IPFW. Tomorrow, The Musketeers battle Toledo, who failed to upset No. 19 Florida on Friday. At least this time it won’t take me until 2:30 am to find someone’s coffee table to sleep on…

11/17: Toledo Rockets at Xavier Musketeers – 7:30 tip

Drew Lavender to be a Summer Cavalier

 

Cincinnati.com’s Dustin Dow reports at the bottom of his recent Musketeer Blog that Drew Lavender is expected to be a part of the Cleveland Cavaliers summer league squad.  This excites me more than a little, as I am a from the Cleveland area and about as big of a homer when it comes to all sports Cleveland as you can find. 

I know it’s just the summer league and it doesn’t mean I am going to watch Drewbie throwing oops to King James on chumps’ heads all next season, but I wish it did.  The Cavs could use a real point guard like Drew even though he’s 5-foot-nothing.  The starting point guard for the wine and gold is DeLonte West, who is not a natural PG as he was a shooting guard with the Hizawks of St. Joe’s.  Other than that, the Cavs are loaded with shooters and lacking ball-handling passers.  Damon Jones, Daniel Gibson, Sasha Pavlovic, Devin Brown, and some kid who doesn’t play named Billy Thomas (who was Justin Cage’s teammate with the Colorado 14ers of the D-League last season) are all the guards they got, and not one is a real point guard. 

I’m hoping that the Cavs do make a great off-season pickup and get someone who isn’t Larry Hughes, but the addition of a guy like Drew could help a Cavaliers team that has been hurting in the point guard department for some time now (Thanks, but no thanks Eric Snow).  So I say let’s see what Drew Lavender can do with a guy like LeBron who may just like getting wide open passes in the lane.  I know he’s undersized, but hey, Mugsy Bogues was awesome. 

Say It Ain’t So, Drew…

I’m sure you all heard by now that XU’s former star point guard Drew Lavender got arrested last night for “being drunk and having marijuana.“  Ugh.

This isn’t the first time Mr. Lavender has gotten in trouble for his love of booze.  I can remember a quote from him after getting in trouble with Miller for alcohol-related shenanigans that read something like “I learned that nothing good ever happens after midnight.”  Apparently not, as he stood in the street being “drunk and disorderly” and refusing to adhere to police officers’ requests to stop at 2:15 a.m.  Not too smart if your carrying a nice big bag o’ pot, too.  There’s this, and his incident last July where he walked into an Over-the Rhine club screaming “F*** this white club” or something.

The racially-charged incident really disappointed me,  as I personally experienced a very integrated social life at Xavier and know that those words don’t reflect the attitudes and personalities of most of the XU student body.  But unfortunately, as in any other place, there are exceptions.  I just hope the mind-altering substances had more to do with Drew’s choice of words than his personal beliefs…

As far as his latest issues go, it shows that Drew obviously has something of a problem.  Coach Miller has taken time with Drew’s family to try and help him get over this in the past, as he has a history of getting into this kind of touble.  Hopefully this is a wake-up call for him and he learns the ever-important lesson that when you get totally wasted, you do it indoors and outside the view of police.