Xavier will contest three buy games before getting to anything resembling the meat of the schedule; this is the last of those.
Jackson State has the resume of a buy game, and I don’t just mean in terms of current results (since they don’t have any). They have more D2 tournament wins (4) than they do national tournament wins at the D1 level (2). Those wins are in the NIT and the CIT; they are a clean 0-3 as a competitor in the D1 NCAA tournament. All three of those games were as a 16 seed and none of them were particularly close.
As an aside, Jackson State accrued one of their D2 tournament losses by an official score of 2-0 when they refused to take the floor in the 1957 regional final against South Dakota because South Dakota was racially integrated. That is the only such forfeit in NCAA D2 tournament history.
Back to the present, ostensibly more enlightened day, Jackson State is coached by Mo Williams, who was an incredible asset in the NBA Live series of games of my youth. Nothing like seeing a dude you controlled with first generation thumbsticks now occupying a position of authority to make you feel old.
Anyway, Williams has four seasons of D1 head coaching experience under his belt, and it hasn’t been going great. He’s still in search of his first overall winning season, though it should be noted he’s 23-13 in conference games at Jackson State. His teams generally fly to the glass on the offensive end and shun the three-point arc. His defenses gamble to force turnovers but don’t have any other areas in which they stand out. There’s a lot of red ink on his coaching resume on KenPom, which I guess makes sense in the context of his having never placed a team inside the top 300 in that ranking system.
Key departures
SWAC player of the year Ken Evans, Jr. averaged 18.8/5.4/2.9, made 62 threes but still got to the line 204 times, played almost 90% of the available minutes, and led the team in usage rate by a wide margin. Florida Atlantic will be grateful for his services this season. Honestly, this is the same laundry list of top players clearing out that we see at the low-major level every time I do one of these. We’ve already accounted for the leading scorer, so…
Leading rebounder? Forward Zeke Cook, who takes his 6.7/6.7/1.0 averages and 38.6% EFG% to Louisiana. Leading assist…er? Chase Adams, who went for 9.4/2.7/4.2 as a senior and then ran out of eligibility. Second-leading scorer and rebounder? Jordan O’Neal, who also graduated and now competes in the Finnish 1st Division A for Kipina Aanekoski.
But wait! There’s more! Third-leading scorer Coltie Young is out the door to UL-Monroe, taking the volume scoring approach that netted him a game line of 8.7/4.0/0.8 with him on the way. Even guard Keionte Cornelius, who scored 6.5 per game in just 15.4 minutes of run and seemed to have the roster opening up in front of him, decided to find his way to Alcorn State.
I don’t begrudge these kids the opportunity to go chase their futures in whatever way they see fit, but it’s hard to envy a low-major coach who can’t consistently build a roster without having his key pieces poached out from under him as soon as they identify themselves as such.
Key returnees
Wing Jayme Mitchell comes back! He’s a 6’5” rising senior or maybe redshirt junior who has been plagued by injuries throughout his career. He only got nine games last year, but he was posting an efficient 6.6 PPG and shooting over 50% from behind the arc. Also back is 5’10” guard Keiveon Hunt. He’s a solid defender in terms of steal percentage, but he fouls a ton and doesn’t do a whole lot on offense to make up for it. His EFG% has never crested 40%, he turns the ball over like he’s got an NLI deal with a pastry shop, and he is not a good ball distributor. Hopefully he’s a good dude.
Nobody else who scored even 100 points last year comes back.
Incoming players
Guard Daeshun Ruffin joins from Ole Miss. He didn’t play at all last year, but before that he spent two seasons as a high-usage microwave off the bench. As a sophomore, he averaged 9.5/1.1/3.2 in just 18 minutes off the bench. He’s a bit of a chucker and, at 5’11” according to the official roster, a bit undersized. He’ll be an asset at this level. On the complete opposite end of the size spectrum is Florida A&M transfer Shannon Grant, who is listed at 6’11”, 290. He averaged 10 and 4 last year and shot 58.7% from inside the arc as well as 0-1 beyond it. For a lad his size, he’s a surprisingly average rebounder.
Back to little dudes, 5’10” guard Marcus Watson, Jr. joins from the JuCo ranks. He averaged 10.9/5.0/4.5 at Mineral Area Community College, shooting .429/.290/.562 in so doing. Also joining with experience from that level is former JuCo All-American Dylan Canoville, a 6’6” wing who averaged 16.5 and 12.2 at Copiah-Lincoln Community College as a freshman. He made a stop at Southeastern Louisiana last year, where he averaged a modest 3.0/2.5/0.2. He’s an athletic defender and aggressive rebounder for a wing, but his slashing offensive style hasn’t made a smooth transition to D1.
After that, it’s a mish-mash of guys who were deep depth last year and incoming freshman with unheralded recruiting backgrounds. It will be a work in progress to see who finds a way into the rotation, blossoms into a legitimate player, and eventually gets poached by a team from a higher level.
Outlook
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but this is a team that was already not great and has had its best players lost to various forms of attrition. If Mo Williams can get everything sorted, they should challenge for something in the mid table of the SWAC. That doesn’t have anything to do with why they’re getting the invite to Cintas though. The only reason this game will be the subject of discussion is if Xavier grotesquely underperforms.