Xavier at the bye week

You may have noticed that Xavier doesn’t play today. The Musketeers have their open date on the schedule here as we hit the halfway mark of January. There is another Saturday off coming up in February, but this is the first time off for the Big East season for this team.

Seven games in, Xavier is 3-4 and middle of the pack in the Big East. Actually, there really isn’t a pack in the Big East. There are the top five teams, then Xavier and DePaul, then the bottom four. Providence picked up a win at Creighton last night that didn’t meaning fully move the needle for the Friars, but put the chances of a five team Big East in even more serious doubt.

Advertisement

But we’re here about Xavier.

This team is better than we thought

When on song, this team can play with just about anyone. They demolished both Providence and Butler. Both of those teams harbored tournament dreams. Xavier played both of them off the court. The score shows a 13 point win over Providence, but the game was decided with ten to play. They led Butler by 23 with eight minutes to play. Neither of those games were close as Coach Pitino’s vision of a team that runs and runs (and runs) came to life.

But it wasn’t just those two beatings that showed what this team can do. They smashed ODU, beat a West Virginia team that has gone on to beat Kansas, and took 14-3 Georgia to the wire. More than any of that, they play a fun (when it works) brand of basketball that makes them easy to like and cheer for. You don’t have to squint hard to see them making a Big East tournament run that ends with a bid to the tournament.

Advertisement

This team is capable of being utterly horrendous

Take Santa Clara, or the starts to both Creighton and UConn, or the last six minutes at Marquette. The lack of depth of talent means that the margin of error is razor thin. If Xavier does something objectively hilarious like shoot 11-35 inside the arc in a game like they did against Marquette, they’ll lose. If they slow even a bit on…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/xavier-bye-week-163326939.html

Author :

Publish date : 2026-01-17 16:33:00

Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.