In a game they needed to win, Xavier didn’t even show up. Would you back this team to finish 5-1 or take the auto bid? Those don’t seem like probable outcomes.
It’s not often you can say a game was over before the second media timeout, but today’s was. In the first 8 minutes of the game, Xavier shot 1-8/0-3/0-0 and compounded those issues with 7 turnovers. These were not the kind of turnovers that defenses scheme for, either; too often, Muskies simply dribbled the ball into a defender or threw it to nobody. They looked for all the world like a team that started pressing instead of trusting their game plan right from the opening tip.
In other words, it appeared that the pressure of the moment got to them.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they all had some bad canned goods and quick onset botulism made their extremeties numb. Maybe the plane hit some turbulence and everyone was still getting their inner ears settled. Maybe they were all pining for their respective loves during a Valentine’s Day away game. Whatever the case, the 51.3% win probability that Xavier brought into the game had dropped to 12.5% before X scored their second bucket.
Seton Hall scored 18 points in that span, effectively burying the game. Kadary Richmond came out and stamped his imprint all over the game. He drew two early fouls on Des Claude, not that it mattered, because Des couldn’t stay in front of him anyway. More accurately, Des’s presence in front of him didn’t seem to matter. Richmond simply bullied whomever X put on him to get to wherever he wanted to be, at which point he did whatever he liked. The 20/8/13 with just 1 turnover somehow understates how dominant he was.
Quincy Olivari, as ever, did his best to make it interesting. He went for 25/6/1 on 8-17/3-9/6-8 shooting. He cut a very vexed figure, at one point slumping in frustration when he missed a free throw. By the time he had his eye in, the game and likely the season were both gone. Dayvion McKnight somehow shot 5 times and scored 11 points, which is nice. I guess.
The rest of the starting lineup was conspicuous by its absence. Abou Ousmane somehow topped (bottomed?) his performance against Creighton, putting up a performance so worthless that he got just 9 minutes of game time without collecting a single foul. His presence in the lane wasn’t a proxy for resistance as far as the Seton Hall forwards were concerned.
Nemo went for 6 and 4 in a fairly efficient manner. That’s fine from him. When Xavier needs him to go for, like, 18 and 8, it’s not going to happen. He was brought in to be a depth option and he played like one. Hard to fault a guy for that.
That leaves Des Claude. 28 minutes, 6/1/2 with 3 turnovers, 3-8/0-1/0-0 shooting. If you don’t have the formula memorized, that’s a 64 ORtg. Whether or not it’s fair to expect a dude who averaged 4 points on a usage rate of 15% as a freshman to be the guy as a sophomore is immaterial. This is what Xavier has this year.
It’s not enough. We have cut and sliced and done the math every which way we could trying to find an equation that takes Xavier’s resume as input and spits out hope on the other end. Our role on this website is to describe objective reality as accurately as possible. Our role as fans is… well, you guys are all fans.
If you’re looking for positives, Xavier’s freshman bigs shone by comparison. Sasa Ciani went for 7/5/5 in 24 minutes. He still showed the lateral mobility of a battleship on defense at times, but there was a verifiable pulse on the offensive end, which made him the exception more than the rule among the bigs. Kachi Nzeh was a bundle of energy at both ends, going for 8/2/2 with 2 blocks and 1 steal. There’s something there, though I couldn’t tell you specifically what it is.
Anyway, here’s what’s left of the year: Xavier has to finish 5-1 to build any sort of resume. The Muskies would have to beat Marquette at least once and win three road games.
The other option is to take the auto bid. That would probably mean beating at least two of UConn, Marquette, and Creighton at MSG.
Whichever of those seems the most likely to you, cling to them. There’s a week off ahead of the next game, home to Providence. Someone needs to use that time to figure out how to handle Josh Oduro.