Battle For Ohio

Xavier is gearing up for another awesome year of basketball!

Last year:

When the preseason poll came out last year they had Xavier ranked 30th.  I thought that was about right considering that they had lost one of the best point guards that had ever played here in Drew Lavender and their best defender in Stanley Burrell.  Those were two pretty significant losses for the small school that is normally overshadowed by neighbor UC.

Over the last five years Xavier has done a pretty good job of emerging from that shadow and has forced the NCAA to recognize them, and not as the “other” Cincinnati team.  Lately UC has been the afterthought, and it has been glorious.

Xavier finally cracked the top 25 in week two after defeating number 12 ranked Memphis.  A huge win at a neutral venue and still we only jumped up to 20th in the polls.  Memphis was 17th, WTF?!  That is almost as bad as the BCS.  You beat a team but we still think they are better than you, yeah that sounds fair.

In any case, Xavier would remain ranked and go on an amazing run.  It was one of their best years, in a year that was supposed to be the start of a rebuilding year.  BJ Raymond stepped up and became a leader last year, and while I feel Derrick Brown took a slight step backwards, he was still a very good scorer and an above average defender.

Xavier would end the year with a tough loss to Pittsburgh that they had a chance to win.  When it was all said and done they ended up 15th in the polls with a 27-8 record.  The only real ugly loss they had all year was to Duke.

The offseason:

Not a good offseason for the Muskies.  Sean Miller jets for the money out in Arizona.  Everyone knew it was coming.  Miller had done just about all he could do here, and everyone knows that Xavier is a stepping stone school.  Gillan used us, Prosser used us, Matta used us, and Miller used us.  Both Matta and Miller left on bad terms because they basically got caught in lies.  Even worse Miller took recruits from Xavier and left the cupboard kind of bare for Chris Mack.

BJ, we will miss that emotion and leadership, oh and those clutch three's.

BJ Raymond and CJ Anderson graduated.  Those were two of our top three scorers from last year.  Raymond was the leader, he was the emotion.  When he was hot he could take over a game and everyone seemed to be energized, but if he was off the whole team would struggle.  Anderson was always an enigma to me.  he loved to drive to the basket, but was not the best ball handler.  I cringed every time he drove because he would turn the ball over A LOT.

Derrick Brown announces that he will enter the NBA draft.  Derrick was a tremendous talent and extremely athletic.  He was fun to watch when he was flying around and he had to be one of the best dunkers in college basketball.  Knowing he was a bit one-dimensional he spent a lot of time last year trying to develop a better outside shot.  I didn’t like it.  He wasn’t a horrible shooter, but you could tell that he was experimenting to see what worked, and that isn’t something you do in the middle of the season.  But what that told me was there was no doubt he was planning on going pro.  So when he finally announced it, it really came as no surprise to me.  I really think that if he would have come back and played another year at Xavier he could have been drafted higher and made more money.

Chris Mack is named the head coach.  Chris is a former XU player himself and was the assistant under Sean Miller.  Being from XU might mean he might stick around for a while.  Coaching under Miller means that he already knows the players well and he knows the system, that he has already said will not change.  Mack is also known for his recruiting skills which will be tested in the fall out of Sean taking his recruits out to Arizona with him.  Mack also made a genius move by going out and grabbing Pat Kelsey from Wake Forest.  Pat is another XU alum that is a monster recruiter and might feel right at home back here at XU.

This season:

The preseason poll came out and guess what,  Xavier isn’t in the top 25.  I can see both sides here, but I will be honest I am a little miffed that after doing so well last year in what everyone thought would be a down year, Xavier blew everyone’s expectations away and finished the year 15th.  Lets go over the evidence.

Case against being in the top 25:

Derrick was best known for his high flying dunks!

• Xavier lost it’s top defender, it’s top three scorers, it’s top rebounder and it’s heart and emotional leader.

• Xavier lost it’s head coach.  In five years he led them to three conference titles, one conference tournament championship and four NCAA tournament appearances.  In those four appearances there was a sweet 16 and an elite eight finish.

• Xavier lost three starters.  Two forwards and a guard will be hard to replace.  Especially when Raymond was the heart and soul of this team last year.

• Xavier isn’t picked to win the A-10.  Dayton retained 10 of its top 11 scorers from last year and looks poised to have a good year.  Perhaps that is why Dayton made the jump from ending last year 30th in the polls to starting this year 22nd.

• No real backups for the big men.  Jason Love and Kenny Frease are just about it as far as big men on this team.  Xavier has about 20 guards on the team, but not a whole lot of extra big men.  Look for teams to really play down low against Xavier to try and force foul trouble.

• Jason Love will be the only senior on the floor.  Ever.  Dante Jackson is a junior and the rest are freshmen and sophomores.  Last years squad started two seniors and a junior.  And this is typically a team that relies on their senior leadership.

Case for being in the top 25:

• Jamal McLean replaces Derrick Brown.  In the limited action that McLean saw last year he proved to be an excellent rebounder and is a swing man in the mold of Posey and Brown, pre NBA dreams.  He will have every opportunity to prove he can replace Brown.

Posterized!

• Jordan Crawford.  You know the guy that dunked on LeBron?  Well after having to sit out after transferring he will probably end up starting.  He is an excellent scoring guard and his height, 6’4″ will cause matchup problems.

• Chris Mack was Sean Miller’s assistant, so the transition should not be tough at all.  All the players know him, like him, respect him even.  He will be using the same schemes that Miller had in place, so there won’t be any difficulty there.  He has said that he would like to run more, which is exciting.

• Pat Kelsey.  Chris stole Pat away from Wake Forest and brought him back home to Cincinnati, being a former XU alum as well.  Pat is an excellent coach and an even better recruiter, which is nice since Sean left us high and dry when he left.

• Guard depth.  Xavier has a plethora of good guards.  This is a good problem to have, especially for Chris Mack who wants to run more.  More guards means more fresh legs to run that floor.  Lyons, Redford, Jackson, Halloway, Crawford and Walsh will all be eligible to play.  That is six guards to rotate in and out, and all of them are good players.

• Brad Redford.  In case you missed it Brad was named the second best shooter in all of college basketball.  My guess is that Brad will be coming off the bench, which is weird considering that he is such a good shooter.  But they will need Crawford in there to start and Jackson is emerging as a leader and a defensive stopper.  Brad will play the role of assassin.  He will come in bury about five 3-pointers from half court and then go back to the bench until nails are needed for the coffin.  I am so excited to see him shoot the ball.

Dante will need to step up and fill the void left by BJ Raymond. Can he do it?

• Dante Jackson.  Like I said, he is emerging as the leader with Jason Love on this team.  He plays with heart and emotion and a lot of hustle.  Plus he has had the benefit of learning great defense from Drew Lavender and Stanley Burrell.  He will start, but will be rotated in and out a lot for better ball handlers and scorers.

• All the exposure the young kids got last year.  Halloway and Frease were both Freshmen that logged serious minutes last year, which will make this year a lot easier for them to grasp, and advance.  Crawford might not have played, but he did start as a freshman at Indiana and played extremely well, and dunk not included, has played well in summer leagues.

Did Xavier get jobbed?  I think so.  I mean, Clemson is ranked (24th), what did they do that was so damn special?  At the very least Xavier deserved to be 25th, they earned that.  It makes my blood boil every year when Xavier gets disrespected nationally.  It was bad enough for years to get disrespected locally because of the Criminal College down the street, but now that we have emerged from that shadow we have to prove ourselves all over again.  It’s tiring and frustrating.  Ahhhh, the life of a mid major.

But maybe this is a good thing.  Xavier seems to do quite well when expectations are low.  Can they rise up out of the ashes and stun the NCAA again?  I think they can and will.  Look for them to be ranked anywhere from 10-20 and to be headed to their fifth consecutive NCAA tournament at the end of the year.