We’re at the quarter post, which is as good a time as any to overreact.
With the NFL there is a temptation to treat every game like it is a referendum on the season. With the Browns, that generally means a reshuffling of why we hate Deshaun Watson, with the Bengals I’m imagining it’s some sort of shock that they somehow keep losing. College basketball is a lot like that. The season isn’t long, losses early on can kill you, and each game is an opportunity to sit and stew for several days. That’s where we are now, so here goes.
I think this team is better than it seems
There is still a lot of talent here. Zach Freemantle is a monster. Ryan Conwell can score in bunches. Trey Green might score 20 on any given night. Dayvion McKnight and Marcus Foster are just rock solid. Fill in the stylings of Good Dailyn Swain and some minutes from Jerome Hunter and you have the basis of a very good team. A large part of what has made this season frustrating so far is that it seems like these guys should steamroll lesser competition because they are definitely talented enough to do so.
There is a definite lack of focus
This team knows it is talented. Sometimes that very obviously leads to the foot coming off the gas as everyone just assumes things will work out. That very nearly led to a season crippling loss on Sunday. A Q4 loss would have functionally doomed Xavier to a season of playing catch up. The talent won out, but at various times during the game you could watch the team assume another 21-4 run was in the offing and they could bury it whenever they wanted to. Then they just didn’t. That same lack of focus was on display against Michigan, where they got run out of the gym by a decent team.
It’s too early to panic, not too early to be concerned
There is a lot of season left. Xavier has a bunch of Q1 chances, though not as many as a normal Big East season, and plenty of time to impress the committee. It’s also reasonable to think that Xavier hasn’t done anything at all to impress anyone yet. Make no mistake, if the tournament for some reason started now, Xavier wouldn’t be anywhere near it. Neither the resume nor the eye test are in the Musketeers favor at this moment. Usually X has a big win on their CV by this point. Instead, they’ve played one Q1 game and they got absolutely humiliated in it.
The Big East won’t be the boost it usually is
Xavier has seven Q1 games left on the schedule now. That will bring them to a total of eight. Last year they played 15. Conference play is packed with Q2 and Q3 games this season. For X to have a chance, they need to bag at least three of those games. There won’t be chances later on to make up for losses. UConn could crawl back into the Q1 home and away category, and somehow Butler might, but there just aren’t the big games to make statements. The 9-11 that KenPom has X currently predicted for in Big East play won’t get the job done.
Someone else has to start playing
Jerome Hunter, Dante Maddox, and John Hugley have been conspicuously bad so far. Maddox is a shooter who can’t make anything right now. Hugley looks completely lost and has an astronomical 35% turnover rate. Hunter is maybe the closest to rounding into form, but he’s hardly setting the world alight. One of them, or maybe Cam Fletcher, needs to start helping. When Bad Dailyn Swain plays or Trey Green can’t get it rolling, Xavier is suddenly not a deep team. Watch John Hugley chase the ball like a man forever one step behind a windblown piece of paper or Dante Maddox miss his rotation and an open shot is becoming incredibly frustrating.