The Musketeers have to turn things around, but where can they do that?
I don’t think anyone disputes at this point that something is wrong with the Xavier Musketeers. They are 8-3, they have no good wins, and they are languishing 60th or below on every metric that matters. Their average win by NET ranking is 253rd. That is not something that resumes for March are built on.
The good news is that there are now nine Q1 games left on the schedule. There are seven Q2 games left and only four Q3/4 tilts. That adds up to a lot of chances to get good wins, limited chances to eat resume poison, and the time to make the non-conference slate seem like a bad dream.
But this Xavier team as it is playing now just isn’t going to do that. KenPom thinks they’ll go .500 in the Big East. Bart Torvik projects them to go 9-11. Those leave Xavier hovering around 17 or 18 wins heading into the BET. That actually doesn’t sound that bad, grab a good win and you’re in, but both of those projections have Xavier winning and losing based on the current metrics. It would leave X with a NET around 70 somewhere (that’s hard to project) and way out of the tournament.
So Xavier needs to beat someone good to get some wins that actually matter. Beating Georgetown and Seton Hall isn’t going to impress the committee, nor should it. No win is a bad win (just like no loss is a good loss), but some aren’t helpful. That means X needs to adjust something to beat UConn, Marquette, Creighton, or St. John’s. Go 3-5 in those games and suddenly Xavier is right on the bubble. Steal a road game against them and things look even better.
But Tyrique Jones isn’t walking through that door. Xavier has to improve with what they have. Trey Green is not likely to be back any time soon. Here are three ways Xavier can become the kind of team that can actually win a tight game when it matters.
Close out possessions
Xavier lost on Saturday because they let a free throw shooter stick back his own miss. That was just the most glaring of the 12 offensive rebounds they allowed. UC grabbed 30% of their own misses. Xavier is 12th in the nation in defensive rebounding right now, but that is a stat propped up by the weakness of their schedule. TCU got back 32.3% of their misses and South Carolina State almost hit 30% themselves. Michigan was held to 20%, but they didn’t miss often enough for that to matter.
Basically, Xavier has hammered bad teams on the defensive glass and gotten smacked in the two Q1 games they’ve lost on the road. They don’t have to hold UConn to 23% like they have on aggregate this year, but they can’t allow good teams to get chance after chance. Zach Freemantle has been great on the defensive glass, Dailyn Swain and John Hugley have been decent. Everyone else needs to step it up.
Figure out how to score efficiently inside the arc
Xavier is only getting 38.3% of their points from deep, which is only good for 210th in the nation. Despite some struggles recently, they’re still an elite three point shooting team. They score a lot inside, but they don’t do it well. Freemantle and Swain are both over 60% shooting inside the arc, no one else on the team is over 46%. For reference, the team shooting 46% is 313th in the nation. So that’s bad.
The most obvious candidates to improve are John Hugley and Jerome Hunter. Hugley is shooting 44% inside the arc right now, he’s a career 51% shooter. (He also doesn’t usually turn the ball over a third of the time he touches it.) Jerome Hunter is shooting 46%, last season he was at 59%. Far more surprising has been the reinvention of Ryan Conwell as nothing but a shooter. While his ratio remains similar, Conwell has been far worse inside the arc this season, shooting a shocking 17.8% lower than he did last year. That’s a statistically significant difference to be sure. For Xavier to start winning games, they need someone to start finishing in the paint.
Stop panicking
This one is slightly more esoteric than the other two in that it’s hard to put numbers on exactly what happens to Xavier when games get close late. The officiating didn’t help, but once Xavier gave up the lead in the Shootout they had three turnovers, only made three shots, and somehow didn’t foul the 29% free throw shooter who caught an inbound pass.
Against TCU Xavier also came thundering back into a close game and took a lead into the waning moments. They then went 2-7 (with one of those an utterly pointless Swain three at the buzzer), turned the ball over twice, and allowed 11 points in just over three minutes. It was a complete collapse.
I could break down the SC State game as well, but you get the idea. In close games against decent teams, Xavier has imploded spectacularly. Just struggling would be one thing, but that hasn’t been the case. They’ve disintegrated completely. As much as most people still seem to love him, some of that has to land on Sean Miller. It’s his team and his guys falling apart out there. Thus far he has not been able to arrest the slide.
Written out in 930 words it doesn’t seem that hard. Grab some boards! Make some shots! Stop throwing the ball to the wrong team! It won’t be that simple in reality. It’s not impossible, but Xavier has to use the guys they have to get better. It doesn’t get easier from here.