All About: Xavier

The introductory paragraph, courtesy of Wikipedia:

Xavier University is a private, Jesuit, co-educational university in the United States located in Cincinnati, Ohio. Today, Xavier University is one of 28 member institutions of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities. It educates over 4,000 undergraduate and 2,500 graduate students annually. Xavier is primarily an undergraduate, liberal arts institution. Graduate programs include education, counseling, English, theology, psychology, and business. Xavier’s large part-time MBA program is a nationally ranked, AACSB accredited program.

Xavier presents an interesting dichotomy to me. Are they, as most would imagine, a mid-major along with their Atlantic 10 conference brethren, a mid-major? Not according to Forbes magazine, who ranked the the Musketeers as the most valuable mid-major school, and #20 most valuable college basketball program in the nation, due in large part to their lucrative seat licensing deal.

Xavier is no stranger to big time basketball. They are in their third consecutive NCAA tournament, bailing out in the second round last year and the first round the year before. But 2004 saw the Muskies make a mythical run to the Elite Eight, and this is the seventh overall appearance in the NCAAs for Xavier in the 2000 decade.

Bob Huggins is quite familiar with Xavier, the program if not the current incarnation, from his days at Cincinnati where the Bearcats and Muskies are bitter cross-town rivals. And Xavier coach Sean Miller is familiar with WVU as a bitter arch-rival from his playing days at the University of Pittsburgh. Oddly enough, Xavier joined the Atlantic Ten in 1995, just after WVU along with Rutgers left the A-10 to join the Big East.

Despite relative closeness geographically, WVU and Xavier met on the hardwood only one previous time, a 1979 meeting at the WVU Coliseum. Gale Catlett’s Mountaineer team led by Lowes Moore and Greg Nance downed Xavier, 82-65.

On to the current Xavier team. These Musketeers have a very balanced offensive attack, with six players averaging above 9.8 points per game. The leading scorer is 6′9″ forward Josh Duncan. Duncan can attack the rim or beat you from the perimeter as he is a 41.8% shooter from behind the arc on 122 attempts this season. Duncan also hits on about 58% of his two-point attempts. Even higher on the effective field goal percentage charts is 6′7″ sophomore Derrick Brown at 60.2% on the season. Brown is much more of an inside player as he has attempted about 30 treys this year. He scored a career-high 19 points and pulled down 11 boards in the first round victory over Georgia.

Xavier is most known by the casual fan for their guard play, and especially the diminuitive point guard Drew Lavender, listed at 5′7″. Lavender is averaging 11.0 points and 4.4 assists this season and is a strong defender despite his small size. Lavender has faced big guards before, so I’m sure WVU’s Darris Nichols, Joe Mazzulla or Alex Ruoff will not have as huge advantage as one would think in that matchup. Lavender is also a threat to knock down the outside shot at any time, with a season three-point percentage of 40.4

The other household name at guard for Xavier is Stanley Burrell, the 6′3″ senior and defensive specialist. Burrell averages 9.8 points per contest. Two other guards are among leading scorers for Xavier, C.J. Anderson (6′6″, Sr, 10.7 PPG) and B.J. Raymond (6′6″, Jr, 10.1 PPG).

Just when you thought Texas had cornered the market on guards with initialized first names, along come C.J. and B.J. for the Muskies. Anderson is more of a forward type who does not shoot from the outside, while Raymond is statistically even more deadly from outside than Burrell, Lavender or Duncan.

Coach Miller is not afraid to go deep into the bench and has three more players who have played in each game this season: Jason Love (6′9″, So.), Dante Jackson (6′5″, Fr.) and Adrion Graves (6′9″, Jr.) So you can say this team doesn’t have tremendous height, but it does have long, athletic guys and lots of them. They may not be seven-footers, but Brown, Anderson and Love each average over 5 boards a game.

Looking over Ken Pomeroy’s scouting report, another thing that stands out is Xavier’s 32.5 free throw rate, 11th best in the country. WVU has struggled with teams that get to the line a lot (i.e. UConn in the regular season) and with Xavier’s quick and athletic lineup it is imperative for the Mountaineers to avoid foul trouble. Not only can the Muskies get to the line, they shoot a 14th-best 75.5% when they get on the line.

Jason Love rates as the #2 player in the nation in offensive rebounding rate, which is another bug-a-boo for the Mountaineers. Will WVU throw some zone looks at the Muskies? I expect they should to try to negate the quickness and offensive rebounding prowess. However they will have to use those man-to-man principles because of Xavier’s outside shooting.

The more I look into Xavier and read and look at the numbers, the better they looked. They have looked good not great all season to me. I felt after Sunday’s games that WVU had a very winnable game on its hands. But the more I dig up, the closer this game looks to me. Xavier looks like a team that can exploit WVU’s weaknesses, and doesn’t have the weaknesses that WVU exploits in other teams. You can’t expect a free ride in the NCAA tournament or the Sweet Sixteen, but I’m starting to believe this will be a very much more challenging game for WVU than I first imagined.

Oh, by the way. Xavier has Charles Bronson on their team. As if there wasn’t enough to worry about already.

The Mountaineers and Musketeers will tip off from Phoenix at 7:10 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday. This is the first game of the session so that tip time is solid.

NCAA Tournament: Weekend Redux

I wanted to post more about this weekend’s games, but never really got around to it. So I decided in one post to just ramble on, stream-of-consciousness style about WVU’s men and women and the tournament in general. 

Let’s start off with the Mountaineer women’s team, losers by a 64-46 margin in to Vanderbilt in the round of 32, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. WVU got behind early, dug in and got the lead back before half, but folded like a tent in the second half. It is very uncharacteristic of a Mike Carey team to quit playing hard. And WVU is known as a strong defensive team and a great shooting team but looked like neither for long stretches in the game. In some ways, bowing out in the round of 32 seems pretty disappointing to me.  WVU was ranked in the top 15 most of the season and had seven battle-tested seniors. After a third-place finish in the Big East, the season is now over for WVU. This was one of the best women’s squads in school history. Maybe we’re becoming spoiled because of the success of other programs on campus, but I surely thought this women’s team could see greater heights. But in the end, they got a bad tournament draw at New Mexico, where they chiseled out a first-round victory by the skin of their teeth, then faced Vanderbilt who were on fresh legs after a first-round blowout of Montana. So WVU was somewhat doomed from the start. Now Mike Carey has to rebuild around players like Ashley Powell, Sparkle Davis, and Liz Repella. Carey has signed a stellar recruiting class and always has success getting JUCO replacements when needed, but this is probably going to be the best WVU team for a while.

As I predicted, after the men’s 73-67 victory over Duke that propelled WVU to it’s third sweet sixteen in four years, most of the focus was on Duke, how poorly they played and how their dynasty has fallen. Most people want to pin the win on Joe Alexander and mention Joe Mazzulla in passing, but again Alex Ruoff stepping his game to the level where it needs to be was a key factor.

Coach Huggins seems to have a knack for knowing when he can put his role players in a position to succeed. All year, Mazzulla has played lights out at times, but other games he may be nearly invisible and play less than 10 minutes. Ted Talkington played extensively in the UConn Big East tournament game and was helpful. Cam Thoroughman on a few occassions this season and again against Duke came in and provided much-needed physicality and was even able to grab 4 points and 4 rebounds. One decision I didn’t like was the decision to start Wellington Smith over Jamie Smalligan. As soon as I saw Smith in the lineup, I told those with whom I was watching that Smith would get into quick foul trouble. And so it passed. You have to love Smith’s athleticism and aggressiveness, but he has a knack for getting in foul trouble, and mostly stupid fouls of the offensive variety, or personal fouls in the backcourt. Smith has provided a spark off the bench all year and he needs to continue in that capacity.

Finally, just to recap the tournament in general so far. I did pretty poorly in my picks overall. I said Georgetown would stop Stephen Curry. Obviously wrong. But it begs the question, will anyone be able to stop Curry? Or contain the rest of the Davidson team enough that even if Curry scores 50 it’s not a factor? Georgetown looked like one of the premier defensive teams in the country for much of the year, they looked like whipped pups against Davidson.

On a Georgetown tangent, I pity the NBA team that wastes it’s draft pick on Roy Hibbert. at times he has shown flashes of brilliance, certainly he dominated WVU in the Big East tournament, but he is far too inconsistent and downright apathetic at times. Which is true of a lot of NBA players as well, but I just don’t think Hibbert is skilled enough in any one area to amount to a hill of beans in the NBA. If I’m an NBA scout I am taking a lot longer look at Patrick Ewing, Jr. than Hibbert. Ewing doesn’t have the measurables of Hibbert, but he certainly has the pedigree and fantastic basketball instincts.

The top seeds are still alive, but despite UCLA’s near-miss against Texas A&M, I still think Memphis is the most vulnerable one-seed. North Carolina, Texas, Louisville and Kansas look like precision instruments. Tennessee is scratching and clawing through games just like you would expect a Bruce Pearl team to. The brilliant coaching of Jay Wright is shining through in Villanova. Western Kentucky and Davidson are still fighting over the Cinderella slipper. I’ll have my sweet sixteen picks later in the week, but for now I think this is one of the more interesting tournaments in a while, just from an outsider’s perspective, not because of WVU’s participation. I am genuinely interested in almost every sweet sixteen matchup and that doesn’t usually happen.