Just one thing here: Xavier Basketball

The Muskies couldn't have looked any worse on Wednesday at Charlotte, bringing their 4 game win streak to an end. 

Can they turn it around against St. Joe's? The Hawks are always tough at home and their mascot is always annoying. St. Joe's has a shot-blocking machine in C.J. Aiken. Aiken is blocking 3.1 shots/gm in addition to 11.9 pts/gm and 6 reb/gm. If you watched Wednesday's titanic struggle, you saw the Muskies get swatted 10 times. We better start trying some pump-fakes and stop taking it up soft if we want a different outcome. And yes, that sounds like an amateur comment but we seriously were not pump-faking any shots, just going straight up and getting rejected time after time.

Who will step up and take the pressure off of Semaj Christon and Travis Taylor to do all the scoring?

Let's go Muskies!

That was 40 minutes of ugly. Plain and simple. The Muskies and 49ers traded the lead for most of the game and X ended up losing 63-57. Semaj Christon and Travis Taylor were great - They each scored 18 pts, each had 3 steals, and Taylor had 11 boards while Semaj had 5. The rest of the team was apparently sleep-walking.

While Trav and Semaj shot a combined 17-32, the rest of the team shot 8-36!!! The foul disparity didn't help our cause. X was called for 27 fouls vs Charlotte's 15. And the 49ers got 29 FT attempts to X's 9!

Very disappointing loss, another game we could've won but didn't. That's pretty much the story of all 7 losses. 

On the bright side, X is 4-1 in the A10 and VCU is the only team ahead of them. The Muskies head to Philly to play St. Joe's on Saturday. The Hawks are surely going to be pissed after dropping a home game to the Bonnies last night.

The Muskies have not had a lot of success at Charlotte recently. Former XU coach and not Hair Club for Men member, Alan Major, and the 49ers have won 2 of their last 3 home games against Xavier. They are 9-0 at home this year and 15-3 overall. They come into tomorrow's game as a 3 point favorite over X.

Charlotte is heading to Conference USA next year so unless we meet them in the A10 tourney in March, this could be our last match-up for quite a while. The 49ers, like the Muskies, are a good rebounding team. Travis Taylor and the rest of the big men for the Muskies need to bring their "A" game Wednesday night against Chris Braswell and company. If our forwards can hold their own and our 3-guard combo of Semaj, Dee, and Redford keep up their recent offensive pace, we will be in good shape.

Let's go Muskies!

Although it looked ugly at the beginning when LaSalle jumped out to a 20-9 lead, the Muskies played great to close the 1st half and then ran away with the game on Saturday.

It was another all-around effort by X. Dee Davis played in his first game back and appeared able to use his injured wrist without any problems; he scored 6 on 2-3 shooting and had 7 assists in 23 minutes. Semaj had 18 points and 5 assists on an impressive 8-11 shooting. Redford had 13 pts, Robinson had 10 pts & 6 rebs, and Taylor had 9 pts & 12 rebs. The Muskies shot 58% from the field and put on quite a show.

Can't wait to see how they handle a tough test on the road. They play at Charlotte at 7:30 on Wednesday night.

Go Muskies!

The Muskies are going for their 4th win in a row when LaSalle comes to Cintas on Saturday. LaSalle has not had a great basketball season in quite a while but this year they are legit. The Explorers are 12-4 but just 4-3 on the road. Ramon Galloway is a big-time scoring threat and a familiar faces in the A10. The Senior is averaging 17 pts/gm and shooting 43% from 3. Galloway might be the best player in the A10; he's definitely one of the most dangerous. Let's see if walk-on Landen Amos can slow him down as well as he did against Temple's Khaliff Wyatt.

No word on whether Dee Davis will definitely play or not. I think he will get some time on the court but I'd expect Redford and Semaj to still get the bulk of the minutes at the guard positions. The Explorers are getting out-rebounded so hopefully the Muskies can handle them on the boards.

Let's go Muskies!!!