Just one thing here: Xavier Basketball

Eight teams are fighting for the top 4 seeds in the A10 tournament with just 2 games to go.  With a top 4 seed comes a bye from the first round and an automatic trip to the quarterfinal round in Atlantic City.

The winner of the Xavier/St. Louis game tonight is in great shape.  It would clinch a bye for St. Louis.  A Xavier win would not quite be a guarantee, but would put us in great shape with one home game to go.  Everyone else in the A10 plays Wednesday night and the A10 regular season wraps up Saturday.

Go Muskies!

The games are getting more and more important.  A win at St. Louis tomorrow night (9PM) would draw us even with the Billikens for 2nd place in the A10 and would help boost our resume for the Big Dance.

But this won't come easy.  As you probably recall, St. Louis bored us to death and beat us at Cintas earlier this year.  They are 14-1 at home this year!  That one loss was against Temple.  We will have our hands full for sure.  St. Louis is allowing just 56.4 points a game, the 7th lowest in the nation. 

St. Louis has a RPI of #35, so this would certainly be a great win if we can pull it off.  Early Vegas lines tell us just how good St. Louis is at home, they are an 8 point favorite in the opening lines.  It will take another big day from some XU upperclassmen.  Let's hope Kenny picks up where he left off Saturday and carries us to another big win.

Let's go Muskies!

KENNY!  I said the seniors need to step up and Kenny Frease did just that.  Frease had 19 points, 14 reboards (7 were offensive) and he had some huge rebounds down the stretch to seal the game.

11 minutes into the game, it was 14-0 Xavier!  Well, that was a lot of fun to see, but then Richmond started getting serious.  They climbed back into the game and eventually took the lead in the 2nd half after the Muskies offense dissapeared.

Thankfully some big baskets by Holloway and Frease earned us the win down the stretch.

Everyone surrounding the Muskies in the A10 standings lost last night, so now XU is in 3rd place, a game back of St. Louis and 2 games back of Temple.  Only 2 games left!  The stakes are high!

Go Muskies!

The Muskies loss to UMass Tuesday night gives them no breathing room in the fight for a spot in the tourney.  Thankfully, the teams on the bubble this year are much weaker than most years so the Muskies are still in the hunt.

Richmond comes to Cintas Center for an 8pm game Saturday.  They are 4-9 on the road and only 6-8 in the A10, but they've had some solid wins this year.  They beat Temple by 11 (albeit without Temple's big man), they beat LaSalle a few weeks ago, and they won at St. Joe's last week.  Not too shabby.

There are some unfamiliar faces on Richmond's starting 5 this year.  They have 4 guys averaging double-digit points per game, and none of them are Seniors.  Even the mascot is new this year.  They finally did away with that creepy, fan-repellant of a mascot.  They must've realized that kids don't like giant spiders running up to them and trying to hug them.  Or not.  The new mascot is a still a spider, but this time, a creepier one.  Not possible?  Well see for yourself.  Old mascot, Spidey, is on the left and new mascot, WebstUR (yep, for real) is on the right.  It's hard to tell from this angle, but WebstUR has 4 legs and some webs coming out of his back to ensure a 100% nightmare guarantee for all passersby under the age of 10.

It's time for our upper-classmen to step up and take over games.  Facing a young team with many who've yet to play a game in Cintas, a Musketeers win is the only acceptable outcome Saturday.

Go Muskies!

We looked awful out of the gate at UMass.  10 turnovers in the first 4 1/2 minutes of the game.  And as bad as we started, we were leading for a quite a bit of the first half.  But, our poor play caught up to us quickly and UMass started to knock down shots.

Our lead was quickly erased and a big run to close the half put UMass up 12 at halftime.  We were down by as much as 20 in the second half and cut it down to 8, but then traded baskets with the Minutemen down the stretch.  Chaz Williams for UMass was unstoppable, finishing with 29 pts and going 6-8 on 3-pointers. It wasn't XU's night as Tu went 2-11 and Lyons went 6-18.  The bright spots: Wells had a season-high 19 points, Frease had 12pts/8reb off the bench, and Redford had 8 points in just 12 minutes of play.

This loss certainly puts the Muskies squarely on the bubble.  With 3 games to go and then the A-10 tourney, we likely need to win every game or all but one game to ensure we go dancing in March.

Go Muskies!