Through five games, the Muskies are burning the nets at a torrid pace unseen in the program’s history.
As you may have noticed, this year’s Xavier team can really shoot it. I mean, really shoot it. After a season in which many facets of the teams offense were underwhelming, Sean Miller retooled on the fly to put together a roster that can fill it up from deep at a rate we’ve not often seen from the boys in blue and white and also the other colors they sometimes wear.
Through five games this season, Xavier is averaging more than 10 made threes per game, having jarred a staggering 53 deep balls, and that’s including a really lukewarm 6-23 performance in game one. They responded by hitting at over a 50% clip in the next two and are currently 53-122 (43.4%) deep on the year, tenth in the nation in percentage overall and eleventh in total makes among teams with five or fewer games played.
If you’re wondering when the last time Xavier was off to a start this hot from deep, it’s never. Not once in the KenPom era has X made this many threes or has this many games with 10+ made threes in their first five games. I’m confident that, considering the way the game has changed, there isn’t a Xavier team from before 1997 that hit 54 or more from beyond the arc in the first five games. You’re welcome to prove me wrong though.
Even if you throw out the consideration of opening the season with it, Xavier is still on an almost unprecedented heater. With 10, 16, 10, and 11 made threes in the last four games, they’re proving remarkably consistent in prolific output.
Having back-to-back games with 10+ makes from deep isn’t that rare, popping up about once a year no matter how good or bad the team is from deep that year. Three in a row is significantly more rare. It last popped up on 2021, though that team was 31-87 (35.6%) to make it happen, so volume was kind of a substitute for accuracy there. The 2016 team pulled off the feat, going 34-77 (44.2%) late in the Big East schedule.
The closest any Xavier team has come this millennium to matching the streak of four in a row is the 2008 team, also under Sean Miller. Led by BJ Raymond, Drew Lavender, Josh Duncan, and Stan Burrell – and featuring contributions from a freshman Dante Jackson – they ripped off a staggering 44-79 (55.7%) stretch, making, 16, 16, and 12 against Virginia, Auburn, and St. Bonaventure. They backed it up with nine-make performances on either side; it was a blinding 62-117 (53.0%) avalanche that stands to this day as the most impressive five-game stretch of three-point shooting the program has ever seen.
And that’s honestly where I thought I was going to leave this, with this year’s Xavier team chasing down the standard set by the 2008 squad that was only denied the Final Four by a UCLA roster stacked with future first round NBA draft picks.
Then I got to 1999.
Starting with a 12-36 performance in a loss to Temple in the A10 tournament and culminating with a 13-29 showing in the NIT third-place game, they shot 73-176 (41.5%) and hit 10+ threes in six straight games. Behind the leadership of Skip Prosser, Lenny Brown, Gary Lumpkin, and James Posey went on one final wild ride before matriculating. Throw in the season opener the next year where Xavier hit 10 against Maryland Eastern Shore and – as far as I can discern – the program record for consecutive games with double-digit threes made stands at six or seven, depending on how you want to parse it out.
Is that as satisfying a conclusion of the symmetry of Sean Miller, vol. 2 chasing down the accomplishment of Sean Miller, vol. 1’s greatest team? I’d argue that it isn’t, but that’s showbiz for you. It’s always fun to dig through the archives a little bit; you never know what surprises you might find in there.