Just one thing here: Xavier Basketball

After a near-disaster game against Bowling Green, the 6-3 Muskies play against Evansville tonight. Evansville is also 6-3, having lost to Murray State, Indiana, and Ohio. Over the weekend the Purple Aces beat Miami OH by 13 (X beat them by 26 in Nov). XU Coach Chris Mack hooped at Evansville for 2 years before transferring to Xavier.
Let's see if the Muskies can get it together and play solid for a full 40 minutes tonight.

AND....Quick Change is performing at Halftime!

Go Muskies!

What a disaster of a tournament....after falling apart and coughing up what would've been a big win over #23 Iowa, X loses to Tennessee in a revenge game and then to USC on Day 3.

Free throws and turnovers continued to be a problem. Xavier came in 5-0, all wins at home, and leaves 5-3, with an 0-3 record in road/neutral games. NOT good for the resume come March! The good news is that there are a lot of young guys on the team and they will only learn from this. Hopefully it also lights a fire under some of the veterans and pushes them to up their game.

The friendly confines of Cintas Center should help heal the woes and the December slate leaves plenty of chances to turn it around. Bowling Green comes to X Saturday, followed by Evansville next week. Then the Shootout, at Alabama, Wake Forest, and St. John's. All in December. Let's put November behind us and have a much better December.

Go Muskies!

The Muskies were up 15 in the 2nd half and leading the whole way against #23 Iowa. But Semaj left the game with 12 1/2 minutes to go with cramps and countless fouls on X slowed production to a halt. The game eventually went to OT where Iowa finally took the lead and won by 3.

How about a million reasons why we didn't win this game...?
Injuries - Semaj goes down with cramps with more than a quarter of the game remaining. Amos, our best defensive player who we could have really used, of course is still rehabbing his injury. And Erik Stenger, with a bad stomach bug, did not travel with the team and his absence took depth out of the frontcourt.
Turnovers - Dee and the team stop playing smart basketball and the turnovers get out of hand (19 TOs total!)
Free Throw Shooting - 64%, come on guys!!!
Foul Trouble - somehow every sign of contact was a foul on XU and it killed us. Stainbrook & Philmore fouled out and were severely limited in playing time due to fouls, killing our paint production. Three others finished with 4 fouls. 

Alright, rant over. Muskies play in the damn consolation bracket now that we blew this one. Next game is Friday at 1PM, versus either Tennessee or UTEP.

Get it together X!

The Muskies come in as a 5 point underdog against #23 ranked Iowa tonight. Our toughest game of the young season thus far. Iowa has dismantled most everyone on there way to 5-0 this year. The Hawkeyes are averaging 92.6 pts/game, 4th in the nation, while XU has only given up 59 pts/gm defensively. 

Should be a good one. Fill up on turkey and then cheer on your Muskies at 7:00 on Thanksgiving Day.

Round 2 will be Friday and X will Tennessee or UTEP at either play at 1:00 or 7:00

Round 3 is Saturday. If the stars align over the holiday weekend, the Muskies would be playing #2 Kansas in the title game at 9:30 Saturday night.

Go Muskies!

As part of the Battle 4 Atlantis tournament in the Bahamas later this week, the tournament committee scheduled Xavier to play against Abilene Christian before the real tourney kicks off.

The Wildcats (see horrifying picture above) are new to Division I this year and are not enjoying the transition. They are 2-5 but the 2 wins were against DII schools. They played Iowa and lost 103-41! Yes, they lost 103-41.

Go Muskies!