The Muskies wrap the last of a troika of buy games by hosting a miserable Jackson State club.
What’s the best a season can be going after two games? There are a lot of ways that question could be answered, but there is certainly a school of thought that says the best possible outcome after two games is 2-0. That’s currently Xavier’s record, but you could be forgiven for not feeling like this season has started as well as it possibly could have. The Muskies have played two teams that have a combined KenPom ranking of well over 700 and somehow made them look like Prime Jimmer Fredette. Despite giving up 24 threes in two games, the home team is undefeated.
What’s the worst a season can be going after two games? Twenty-three minutes into their season, Jackson State had scored 13 points and trailed by 48 at Houston. That’s a pretty rugged start, and it didn’t get much better from there. In their first game, the Tigers peaked at a win probability of 0.4%. They got as high as 3.8% against High Point, a game in which they didn’t get a stop until the seventh possession and trailed 43-19 in the first half. Inasmuch as 2-0 doesn’t entirely tell the story of Xavier’s year so far, the 0-2 Jackson State sports undersells how thoroughly they’ve been dominated through 80 minutes of the 2024-25 campaign.
Jackson State is on a stretch of a dozen consecutive road games in the non-con to pay the athletic department’s bills for the season. Xavier hasn’t made anything look entirely perfunctory this season; this would be a great time to start.
Team fingerprint
A three-point defense worse than Xavier’s. The Tigers have allowed opponents to shoot 22-44 from behind the arc on the year, which is 350th in the nation. They aren’t that much better inside the arc, with their defensive 2P% mark of 61.5% sitting at 307th. They actually force a decent amount of turnovers and are about average at free throw rate and defensive rebounding, but that defensive EFG% of 67.0% (355th in the country) really undermines anything good they’re doing at that end.
The defense is 275th in the nation; the offense is 342nd. These guys are not good in the attack. They get to the line well, ranking just outside the top 100 in free throw rate, but that’s the only of the four factors in which they’re anywhere close to average. In offensive rebound percentage, turnover rate, and EFG%, they’re outside the top 100 in the nation. It’s just an abysmal recipe, to be honest. In 139 possessions, they’ve scored 111 points. In 67 first half possessions, they’ve scored 40 points. They’re just getting buried early before teams call off the dogs to avoid making it a complete obliteration.
Personnel
Starters
| Starting matchups | ||
|---|---|---|
| Marcus Watson Jr. | Point Guard | Dayvion McKnight |
| Junior | Class | Senior |
| 5’10”, 175 | Measurements | 6’0″, 188 |
| 5/3.5/1.5 | Game line | 18/1.5/5 |
| 30.8/0/66.7 | Shooting line | 73.3/83.3/90 |
| McKnight won’t have the size advantage in too many matchups this year, but he does here. Watson is an aggressive ball hawk on defense, but he can be foul prone and doesn’t add much on offense right now. | ||
| Dorian McMillian | Shooting Guard | Ryan Conwell |
| Freshman | Class | Junior |
| 6’3″, 178 | Measurements | 6’4″, 215 |
| 8.5/2.5/0.5 | Game line | 20/2/2 |
| 50/50/75 | Shooting line | 52.2/50/88.9 |
| It’s here that I’ll choose to mention that Jackson State’s guards are somewhat statistically interchangeable. None of them rack up great assist numbers and all of them can be fairly turnover prone. McMillian is off to a hot start shooting, but his TO% of 45.6% really undermines any good work he does with the ball. He’s probably best served to just chuck it at the rim before he has the chance to cough it up. | ||
| Jalen Tatum | Small Forward | Marcus Foster |
| Junior | Class | Senior |
| 6’4″, 189 | Measurements | 6’5″, 215 |
| 7/1/2.5 | Game line | 5.5/5.5/1.5 |
| 30.8/20/71.4 | Shooting line | 27.3/25/80 |
| Tatum has the highest usage rate on the team, but his 34.6% EFG% and 25.6% TO rate add just to an ORtg of just 75.7. He’s not a great rebounder and is still looking for his first statistically tracked defensive contribution, but at least he doesn’t foul much. He has been getting to the line well, but that’s not enough to salvage his stat line. | ||
| Romelle Mansel | Power Forward | Dailyn Swain |
| Senior | Class | Sophomore |
| 6’9″, 220 | Measurements | 6’8″, 220 |
| 14.5/5/2 | Game line | 10/5/3.5 |
| 45/33.3/76.9 | Shooting line | 60/0/72.7 |
| Mansel was probably Jackson State’s best player in 2023, and – after missing almost all of last year – he’s back where he left off. He doesn’t have a ton of range, but he’s really solid on the defensive glass and lives at the free throw line. He scores well on the block but can be forced into the mid-range, where he’s significantly worse. | ||
| Shannon Grant | Center | Zach Freemantle |
| Senior | Class | Senior |
| 6’11”, 290 | Measurements | 6’9″, 227 |
| 3.5/2/1 | Game line | 18/8.5/2 |
| 60/0/50 | Shooting line | 58.8/0/88.9 |
| Grant is really big and has historically been pretty good around the rim. He isn’t getting a whole ton of usage this year, having shot just 5 times in 44 minutes so far. He turns the ball over a ton, fouls a ton, and has been weirdly invisible on the defensive glass. |
Reserves
Jackson State gets about 31% of their minutes off the bench, more or less bang on the national average. Their best bench weapon is wing Jayme Mitchell, Jr., who is averaging 9.5/2.5/0.0 on the young season. He has been a good three-point shooter throughout his career without offering too much else on the offensive end. He profiles out as a solid defender.
Dylan Canoville is another 6’5” bench wing, but he has a different profile than Mitchell. He averages 5.0/2.5/0.5 and has consistently been a really good offensive rebounder. He’s another good defender, but he fouls too much to really use the tools he has on that end. Guard Juan Reyna started at Houston and played 26 minutes. He came off the bench against High Point for 7 minutes and didn’t do anything that would make you think he’s on his way back to the starting lineup. He’s 1-10 from deep on the season but is a 35% from beyond the arc on his career.
Three questions
-Is this the game where Xavier plays some three-point defense? IU Indy has not played another D1 opponent, but Texas Southern shot 10-23 from deep against Xavier and 1-19 against Georgia in their only other game at the D1 level this season. The Muskies have been absolutely abysmal defending the arc so far this year, and it has really undermined a lot of otherwise decent work they’ve done. There’s a chance it doesn’t really matter until the TCU game in the first week of December – Wake and South Carolina don’t appear to be good shooting teams, and the rest of the teams on the docket are bad – but at some point they’re going to have to get some hands in some faces on the perimeter.
-Can we make a dang layup please? Last season, Xavier’s offense was undermined by the inability to make fairly simple shots near the bucket. They were an average three-point shooting team that played fast and rarely turned the ball over, but they were 272nd in the country in two-point percentage. This season, they’re off to a similar start, sitting 166th in the same category and having let an awful IU Indy team stay close thanks to a terrible start on layups. Jerome Hunter and Marcus Foster are a combined 7-22 from inside the arc; you’d hope at some point that will change for the better.
-Can the Muskies finally make a buy game look like a buy game? The Big East has had teams dropping like flies against lesser opponents, and the one that haven’t been outright losses have often not been convincing performances. Xavier has been down 4 and up 5 at the two halftimes this year; a nice 20-point lead at the break this time around would be worth a laugh.
Three keys
-Dominate the glass. The Muskies have been just kind of okay on the boards through the first couple of games. Especially on the offensive end, they haven’t been very good at all. Jackson State can’t board it at all. This is a game Xavier should feast on, especially during the (hopefully abridged) competitive portion.
-Get out and go. Layups are a lot easier when they’re uncontested, and those happen in transition. Those opportunities are often paired with good defensive rebounding, which dovetails nicely into the point above. Jackson State sells out for turnovers on the defensive end (when they defend at all); X can punish that and harvest easy points on the other end.
-I mean, come on. We’re straining at gnats here; Xavier is way better than Jackson State. They should win this one going away.