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…

THANK YOU DANTE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

It’s a celebration!

(AP Photo/Andres Leighton)

 

May have to do a couple shots of tequila in honor of this victory…….

And here’s the link to Joe and Byron’s call of the game winning shot.