Opening day in any sport is a momentous occasion and college basketball is no exception. For college basketball fans the span of time between the final notes of One Shining Moment and the tipoff of the first game of the new season feels like an eternity of portal announcements, coaching changes, recruiting news, and snippets of your favorite team scrimmaging in some sweltering gym all summer. Then the World Series wraps up and boom! it’s time for college basketball. Xavier enters this season with a feeling of newness and uncertainty. Sean Miller is gone, Richard Pitino is in. For the first time since fall of 2019, Zach Freemantle is not on the roster in some capacity. A program that has long been fueled by player development and underclassmen bench pieces becoming upperclassmen stars returns zero minutes from scholarship players. In some ways this season has the feel of a journey beyond the edge of the map and the first step of that journey is Marist.
Team Fingerprint
This will be the 20th season as a head coach for John Dunne, all of which have come in the MAAC. Dunne preceded Shaheen Holloway at Saint Peter’s, taking the Peacocks to the NCAA Tournament in 2011, and took over at Marist after 12 years in Jersey City. Dunne’s teams play at a glacial pace, ranking in the top 230 in adjusted tempo just once in his 19 years, and hang their hat on the defensive end.
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Offensively, last season’s team was pretty putrid, ranking in the 330’s in offensive efficiency according to both KenPom and Bart Torvik. They were not particularly good at shooting the basketball, but by far their biggest issue on that end of the floor was the freebie battle where their 271 made free throws ranked dead last in the country, due in part to their free throw rate being next to last in the country, and their 18.5% turnover rate finding them outside the top 250 as well. The only redeeming factors were their decent work on the offensive glass and the fact that they leaned into shooting from inside the arc, where they were much more effective.
Defensively, the Red Foxes were much better a season ago. They excelled at forcing their opponents into bad shots, posting the 23rd best EFG% in the country, and only 5 teams, two of whom (Duke and Houston) met in the Final Four, boasted a better defensive field goal percentage against two pointers. Combine that with limiting opponents to only getting 25% of their misses back and you have a solid defensive unit that, while not blocking many shots or creating many turnovers, can create problems for opponents.
Players
Marist brings back 5 of the top 7 scorers from last season’s team, which finished 13-7 in the MAAC and earned the 3 seed in the conference tournament. Earning Second Team All-MAAC preseason honors is wing Elijah Lewis, who averaged 11.6/5.0/2.0 with a shooting line of .405/.277/.827. Joining him in receiving preseason recognition is Third Team All-MAAC guard Jadin Collins-Roberts. Collins-Roberts was good for 8.3/5.3/3.7 a night last season and has averaged almost 2 steals a game for his career. Rising senior Jaden Daughtry will anchor the frontline and while his scoring numbers for his career aren’t eye popping, he averaged a career high 6.0 ppg last season, he was top 250 in both block and steal rate and top 400 in rebound rate at both ends of the floor as the team’s glue guy last season. In the middle, the lineup is anchored by centers Jason Schofield and Tarik Watson. Schofield got a bit more playing time last season because he rebounded the ball better and had an impressive 23.5 assist rate for a big man, but Watson was superior in terms of scoring efficiency and shot blocking. Both struggled with foul trouble as Schofield committed 4.8 fouls per 40 minutes and Watson 5.8. Also featuring heavily should be newcomer guards Rhyjon Blackwell and Justin Menard. Blackwell spent the past two seasons at DII South Carolina-Aiken, where he shot 38% from three last season and averaged 13.3 points. Menard comes over from conference foe Iona, where he averaged 5.5/1.0/2.6 with a 36% rate from three and only 0.7 turnovers per game as mostly a backup guard.
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Three Keys
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Control the pace– We may not see a team more intent on keeping the game slow this season than Marist. Pitino’s teams want to turn the opponent over and get up and down the floor and Marist struggled to keep both of those things from happening last season.
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Take the freebies– As mentioned above, Marist does not put themselves on the line a lot and tends to both turn the ball over frequently and not force a ton themselves. Xavier has struggled with turnovers in the preseason, so it is vital to keep that under control to start the season.
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One step at a time– Xavier was picked 8th in the Preseason Big East coaches poll and the group will no doubt be keen to defy those expectations. The nature of this game is such that they can’t necessarily do that by winning, but putting in a good performance and starting to establish an identity in this game are the blocks on which beating those expectations are built.
