What we learned from Xavier Musketeers win over Providence Friars

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Over the last month, Xavier has played with the pressure of knowing that seemingly any conference slip-up down the stretch could burst its NCAA Tournament bubble.

It didn’t matter.

While other teams played their way off the NCAA Tournament bubble, Xavier has put itself in good position for at-large bid.

Xavier (21-10, 13-7 Big East) ended the regular season on a seven-game winning streak Saturday with a 76-68 victory over Providence on Senior Day at sold-out Cintas Center.

As the streak continued, Xavier began to move into the field for a lot of well-known bracketologists, especially after picking up a pair of Quad 2 wins (vs. Creighton, at Butler) over the last week. Xavier was the penultimate team invited to the dance in ESPN’s Joe Lunardi’s latest bracketology update Saturday morning.

Beating Providence, which has dropped nine of its last 10, doesn’t move the needle, but a loss certainly would have. It’s another bullet dodged by a desperate Xavier team fighting for its March Madness life with no room for error.

Xavier, 12-3 since hitting an early-January “low point”, has hit the significant 21-win mark heading into next week’s Big East Tournament. The last 71 teams to show up to Madison Square Garden with 21-plus wins have been invited to the NCAA Tournament.

Observations from Xavier Musketeers’ win over Providence Friars

Xavier does enough in crunch time to hold off Providence

Xavier was not on its A-game at any point during Saturday’s game. Going into the final media timeout, Providence had trimmed an 11-point lead to just five after a pair of 3-pointers.

The Friars were on fire from beyond the arc (12-of-24) to keep the pressure on Xavier, which had everything to lose in the regular season finale.

Bensley Joseph led Providence with 27 points on 9-of-14 shooting, including seven triples. Ryan Mela added a dozen.

Xavier led 69-64 going into the final media timeout but answered with a 7-2 run and did enough defensively over the final minutes of regulation to escape…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/article/learned-xavier-musketeers-win-over-232605361.html

Author : Cincinnati.com | The Enquirer

Publish date : 2025-03-08 23:26:00

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