You’re going to hear about history today. Here’s some
Do you remember 1979? I don’t, by dint of not quite having been born yet. That year UC won the Crosstown Shootout for the eighth straight time. They were the masters of the Shootout at that point, having lost it twice since 1957. UC fans undoubtedly crowed and talked about the national championship they had won just 17 scant years before. Jimmy Carter was president, a good new house and car would set you back about $80k, and the gas to go in that car was well under a dollar a gallon. Things were going to change, and soon.
I arrived on the scene in 1982. Since then, it has been my favorite team and likely yours as well (you are on a Xavier site, after all) that has controlled this rivalry. In that span the Musketeers are 26-15 in the Crosstown Shootout. A Bearcat fan born the same year I was, a Bearcat fan who loves to ramble on and on about what his team did back before the Civil Rights Act was passed, has seen his team win the biggest rivalry game in the sport just 15 times.
And that’s not a throwaway joke a paragraph back. The last time the Bearcats actually won the thing they use as a stick to beat Xavier fans, discrimination was still 100% legal. JFK was still alive. Color film was not a thing. In short, it was in a time most of us consider history. Since that point, and in sense of a modern basketballing era, Xavier has been the better program, racking up more tournament appearances, Sweet 16s, and Elite Eight appearances than UC. Only the Final Four still eludes the Musketeers.
So, regardless of how today’s game goes, ignore the online haters. They’re pining for days only their grandparents remember. It’s basketball’s own little Lost Cause experiment. Sure, the proverbial south may win a battle or two, but it’s Xavier that is winning this war.