Xavier gets run off the court early in a disheartening loss to Butler.
Somewhere Dailyn Swain is recovering from a surgery that pulled his abdomen open. Hopefully the young man was heavily sedated and didn’t have to watch the first half of this game. What would be a terrible thing to happen in the first game you absolutely had to win? Allowing a 17-0 run? Turning the ball over 10 times? Having leading scorer go MIA? Shooting 30%? What about doing all of that? Would that be terrible? That’s what Xavier did. If the Musketeers knew they had to win this game, it wasn’t evident in the way they played. They Did the Dumb Stuff like their very lives depended on it. Yes, hopefully Dailyn was unconscious for all of that. If he wasn’t, he almost certainly wished he was.
Des Claude fought valiantly to keep Xavier in this game, scoring 13 of the Musketeers 24 first half points. He was, in a bit of a single person civil war, fighting himself as he also turned the ball over five times. Quincy Olivari was 2-12 against Georgetown and came out in this one and shot 2-9 in the first 20 minutes and spent significant time watching from the bench. Second half explosion against DePaul aside, he’s been less than his best shooting the ball since Valentine’s Day.
The Musketeers left themselves everything to do in the second half. Butler wasn’t even that good in the first, they just got chance after chance to extend or hold their lead. Xavier held the Bulldogs scoreless for almost the last five minutes, but then went on a 3:22 slump of their own to close the half. With Steve Lappas announcing this game was missing only Brian O’Connell to be peak miserable.
The second half was then something like watching a beloved dog die in a puddle of its own excrement. Butler ran off a 0-17 stretch from the floor, Xavier responded by missing seven of eight. Xavier held Butler to over 11 minutes without a point an somehow never made it a one possession game. Tony Chiazza reminded everyone why he’s one of the worst officials in the nation by repeatedly having no idea what was going on in front of him.
Basketball can be a beautiful game when it’s being played well. Multiple people tonight said that if you were trying to convince someone to watch the sport and showed them this game, your perspective fan would never watch again. Butler and the utterly reprehensible Thad Matta were awful, Xavier was somehow substantially worse. Quincy Olivari never came close to making a difference and ended the game wearing an auxiliary jersey and a jacket on the bench. Brad Colbert played. Time passed. Des Claude shot more threes. It was wretched.
A special note for Dayvion McKnight. Xavier was putrid tonight, but his unrelenting effort never wavered. McKnight has battled personal tragedy and a disappointing team this year. This is undoubtedly not what he signed up for when he transferred to Xavier. Despite all that, he plays his heart out every single moment. This won’t be his year, but it won’t because he didn’t leave every bit of energy on the floor.
The game ended closer than it actually was. Xavier threw this thing away before the first media timeout, outplayed (if you want to call it that) Butler the rest of the way, and still never came close. The final horn sounded with the crowd chanting “Xavier sucks.” It was hard to argue.