Just one thing here: Xavier Basketball

The apocalypse is now just 2 days from now. No, not the day when Mayans predicted the end of the world. I'm talking about the Crosstown Shootout. As we learned from the media after last year's UC/XU game and endless times since, "the fight" (where 1 total punch was landed) was the most important, horrible, un-called-for, amazing, horrible-again thing to ever happen to college basketball, Cincinnati, and the human race.

Given all that, I don't need to remind you that the game is Wednesday at 7:00 on ESPN2. Let me remind you of the ways the Shootout has been tainted since the day the music died, December 10th, 2011:
- It's now not played on campus. It's played in a dumpy, old arena downtown. It's a college rivalry, play it at the colleges!
- It's now called the Crosstown Classic. Screw that. All real fans of these two schools will always refer to this game as the "Shootout". If you ever catch yourself calling it the "Classic", slap yourself.
- It's on a Wednesday at 7:00. Boo! Why not just play it on a Monday morning?
- It's during Xavier's winter break. Good call, make sure none of the students can attend this once-memorable rivalry game.
- There's nothing wrong with giving to charity but this event is a big part of these schools' revenues each year. Not anymore. In an effort to improve the image of this rivalry, revenues will be shared with the Underground Railroad Museum (and of course with USBank Arena since they are the host). Now, everyone only thinks of good thoughts and charity when they think XU vs UC basketball, right? I'm sure that is all the media will talk about for the next 2 days and during and following the game.
- To ensure there won't be a sell-out and the country won't get to see a really good representation of how much the city loves basketball when they tune in, these clowns set the ticket prices as if each seat comes with a brick of gold. C'MON MAN!!!

Wow, that got really negative, didn't it? Sorry about that. 

I would think most Muskies fans out there are worried about rebounding in this matchup. UC can get to the glass and Xavier has been awful on the boards for long stretches this year. That scares me. Polls don't mean much but UC is the #11 team in the country and is undefeated thus far. It's gonna be one heck of a tough matchup for the Muskies. But when it comes to Shootouts, anything is possible!

LET'S GO MUSKIES!!!