Xavier starts the Ft. Myers Tipoff in Cincinnati by crushing Siena.
We discussed on the podcast and in an article earlier this week (and our brand new Blue Sky account @bannersparkway.bsky.social!) that it is hard to tell exactly how good Xavier is when they keep playing cupcakes. All you can do in buy games is hammer some team down in the two or three hundreds, pay for part of their season, and move on. Or, you could play one of those once in a lifetime bad games and somehow lose or get scared.
Tonight, Xavier didn’t mess around. With 12:15 to play it was a one point game. Trey Green (14/3/3) hit a three and then Xavier decided to start playing defense. Four minutes later the Musketeers were up ten. Siena never really challenged again, despite Reid Ducharme firing away like he was trying to make up for an entire year at Xavier in one night. When Ryan Conwell (16/1/0) hit a three with five minutes to play in the first it staked Xavier to a double digit lead they wouldn’t relinquish. The icing on a dominant first half was a Marcus Foster (12/5/5) steal and layup to end it and put Xavier up 16.
That should have been it, and to some extent it was. Another Conwell three stretched the lead to 19 but then Xavier sort of just let off the accelerator. Siena got back within 13 as X didn’t score for nearly five minutes and put up only six in a seven minute stretch. Some of that was Siena’s 2-3 zone and some of it was one of those weird little stretches that occasionally plague teams that know they have a game won.
And then Xavier righted themselves. The Musketeers tore off 21 points in the last ten minutes and only allowed 12. The defense for X was good all night and the offense was excellent other than a long and strange stretch in the second half where they just clocked out. It’s Siena. There’s nothing to learn here, no lesson to be taken. It’s time to head south and hope for some real competition.
Takeaways
When Xavier is clicking, they are dangerous: In the first stretch of the game the Musketeers went 8-12 from behind the arc. This offense has some serious firepower in it whether that’s Marcus Foster getting hot early or just feeding Zach Freemantle. X scored 1.19 points per possession even while taking a seven minute union break in the second half. They shot a blistering 45.8% behind the arc and grabbed 29% of the shots they missed. Dangerous.
A few guys are still a little off the pace: Hunter just couldn’t catch the ball tonight and looked a little out of sorts on offense. Thankfully, he hammered the offensive glass. It takes a long time to come back from achilles and heart issues. It also takes time to come back from bad knees. It was good to see Cam Fletcher again and see him moving well. Big John Hugley absolutely crushed down a dunk and played tied for his second most minutes on the year.
Trey Green is a crazy person: 4-7 from deep including a heat check that both hit nothing and didn’t slow him down at all, a ridiculous finish for his single layup, and one 70 foot chest pass to Dailyn Swain for an assist. The guy is absolutely electric at all times. He’s vital depth for this team at the guard spots.