Guys, I think UConn is better than Xavier.
Groundbreaking, I know. Last night UConn went full belt to hindquarters on the Musketeers. Was it, you ask, the 16-2 run, the 13-2 run, or the 10-0 run that did it? I can’t quite tell you, but that was just the first half. Chris Mack used to bemoan the annual butt-kicking at Villanova, but UConn has added in the neat bonus of destroying Xavier wherever they meet. You get the feeling that X probably lost the walkthrough before this game, so dominant were the Huskies.
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Xavier has given us some fun this year. They’ve given us some fun in the last week, actually. The Shootout was a good time, so was the DePaul comeback, and beating Georgetown at Georgetown and making Ed Cooley resort to simple assault. All of those were good times. Last night was not. Xavier was never in that game. Some portion of our small staff here is always watching on a tape delay. This was a game you could turn on, watch for ten minutes, and then fast forward if all you cared about was the result. At that point UConn’s win probability was 99.4%. It would never drop below that.
Clearly UConn is the goal. There was a time when Xavier was not far off that. Before Chris Mack’s ill-fated trip to Louisville, his last four Xavier teams were 21st, 14th, 31st, and 15th in the KenPom. That’s not full on elite, but it’s very close. You still wonder where that last team might have gone had Trevon Blueitt not pulled one a of the all time great disappearing acts against Florida St. Xavier, simply, has not been that good since. Sean Miller’s return season was a great run with a team that also finished 15th in the KenPom, but he couldn’t follow that up. Travis Steele had Xavier to 45th in the season Covid ended early. Those have been the highlights.
Richard Pitino inherits a program with genuinely elite aspirations and a team that is far from it. Xavier is just not very good this season. Getting there is going to take some work. What stood out in both of these matchups was that UConn’s great athletes can also play basketball (and also that Alex Karaban is 30 years old). Xavier’s great athlete is Anthony Robinson.
Robinson was athletic last night, man, can that kid run and jump, but he was pretty horrible at basketball. He went 2-9 from the line, grabbed four rebounds, and somehow nearly fouled out in just 13 minutes. He has not taken a step back since last season at Virginia, he has leapt backward. Despite playing more time, his numbers are worse. Xavier needs players like him to be good in order to succeed.
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The Musketeers are going to live in the fine margins now. Imagine a world in which Gabriel Pozzatto doesn’t get injured and Anthony Robinson doesn’t start baby oiling his hands before games. In that world it’s not hard to see this squad challenging for a bubble spot. In a new NIL age, though, Xavier doesn’t have the depth to withstand losses or players underperforming. Maybe they never have. If you’ll recall, the recent Elite Eight run came after Xavier lost six straight games when Blueitt was out with injury.
That team still produced three NBA players. This season will not. For X to get competitive with the UConn’s of the world, they depth of talent. For that, they need money or the NCAA to start doing its job. Neither seems terribly likely. For now, we just live for moments.
