This is not likely going to be a season in which we are studying the bubble come mid-March. The last two seasons we did. Each game was fraught and full of the tension that can make that time of year so enjoyable. Those teams were full of talent, led by a coach who will finish this season over 500 wins, and had a lot of expectation on them. That talent and those expectations, though, sometimes made watching those teams play a bit of a chore. Each game was a referendum, and those aren’t fun.
This team, on the other hand, has a young coach, a roster full of dudes no one has ever heard of, and will hope to be at .500 when the season ends. That all may seem negative, but they have brought a lot fun back to Xavier basketball. Two point field goals? Silly, no one needs them. Protecting the ball on the way to rim? Goofy, let someone swat it. Three pointers? Yes, please. Running all over creation? Sounds like a blast. Antagonizing opponents? Let’s sign up for two of those.
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This team is fun. They can be fun when they lose (Georgia), they were a blast today in a win. Xavier was 9-30 inside the arc. That is hilariously bad. They grabbed four offensive rebounds. That’s bad. They got blocked another five times and are now 361st in the nation in that. None of that should lead to a win.
But it led to Xavier’s best win. X has one post player, Anthony Robinson, and he managed four rebounds and four fouls in nine minutes. The rest of Xavier’s “post players” just kind of run around, doing stuff. Tre Carroll (17/5/3) decided to impersonate Steph Curry tonight, including on one fallaway three in the second half. Filip Borovicanin (9/6/4) continues to lead the team in assist rate despite standing 6-9 and sometimes dribbling like he’s not exactly sure where his hands are. That ungainliness is just a guise though, Borovicanin rarely turns the ball over. He also joined the three point parade, after his obligatory airball, on a shot in which he needed 23 feet, got 25, and banked in. At least he laughed.
Xavier’s biggest man, Jovan Milicevic (21/7/2), plays like a 6-10 variation on JP Macura, draining threes, driving, talking, showing up opponents, and starting to show some real personality. He is driving this team right now. When the team needs a bucket, he hunts the ball. He blocked a shot today and, when Xavier needed a late stop, picked a pass and went end to end to finish with respect, rather than authority.
This game should be fun to watch. This team of dudes, starting to punch a bit above their weight, is playing with swagger. Roddie Anderson (11/1/5) kind of starts things off. He’s violent in the best kind of way. He made a three in the first half and then spun to let a docile to that point WVU bench know about it. Every big play he was flexing, chest thumping, yelling. Leading, if you will. The idea of he and Richard Pitino sitting alone in the first “team meeting” has paid off with this. Was it a Sweet 16 win? No, but its Roddie’s team.
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All Wright (14/2/4) is maybe the heir to that crown. He’s not the dynamo that Good Roddie is right now, but he’s growing to it. He’s also fearless. He missed to end the game on Friday, he came back today and went 4-4 behind the arc. He also threw a hilarious fit when he was victimized by an incredibly awful call.
Altogether, this team showed some heart today. They built a lead, then they defended it. Against relentless ball pressure they turned it over 10 times for a 14.7% rate. They didn’t offensive rebound at all, but they also only allowed nine second chance points. This team has come a long way since that first game. They’ve come a long way since Santa Clara. This is fun Xavier basketball.
Xavier is still four guys and Good/Bad Roddie
Roddie was 1-7 inside the arc, 1-4 behind arc, and 6-6 from the line. I have no idea where that fits on the Good/Bad scale, but he added a vital 11. Once again everyone else was functionally AWOL. Malik Messina Moore didn’t score and only shot twice. Anthony Robinson has been mentioned above. Isaiah Walker did get six points in just minutes and was more aggressive on offense. He also contributed to the 12-12 from the line.
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Honor Huff is a wank
I believe Zach Freemantle would describe him the same way he did Donovan Clingan: “b**chmade.” (Still a family site, guys.) Huff was useless the entire first half and stands my height but wandered around like he owned the place. He got three free throws off a call when All Wright made no contact with him, and then celebrated like he’d been anything other than the beneficiary of dog dirt officiating. He got a four point play later by throwing his leg into the defending player. If he played like that in any of the pickup games on the east side of Dayton that the Banners staff frequented as kids, he’d have been shown what a real foul is the next time down, then asked to leave. I hope we can somehow knock them out of the post-season so I can point and laugh.
Richard Pitino has this team clicking
Back to positivity. Pitino has this team doing what it does well. They aren’t going to throw the ball into the post and do much unless Milicevic gets Treysean Eaglestaff on him again. They can shoot, though, so Xavier is running offense that gets them chances to lift. These guys are sharing the ball better than all but eight other teams in the country. Over their last three games they are a top 40 team in the nation by efficiency. Is that a bit of a cherry picked stat? Of course, but it speaks to how the team is playing at the moment. They’re doing that because their occasionally hyperactive coach (he ran onto the floor during play to slap Roddie on the butt after a big shot) has them doing what they do well.
This is fun.
