Winning is more fun – Yahoo Sports

With around 13 minutes to go in this game, I sent my brother a picture of the scoreboard and had to apologize to him for my previous comment, as I was just projecting my feelings about the game onto him. He doesn’t follow Xavier with the same unrelenting loyalty that we here at Banners do, but even he responded and said losing to DePaul twice was absolutely tragic. He would have been right, and maybe the fact that he was content to call the game a done deal at that point made the Blue Demons feel okay with doing the same.

By the time Xavier was down 18 with 13, they had spent 107 minutes of basketball making the Blue Demons look like the 2018 Villanova. The first half scoreline flattered the Muskies a bit. Yes, they were only down five, but they also trailed by as many as 12 and were kept at an arm’s length for most of the half. To say everything was going wrong would be an oversimplification of the issues, but it really did feel like they just couldn’t get anything right. DePaul was hitting against a defense that gave them everything they wanted, and X looked utterly shocked that they were not treated to the same 10-ply defensive effort on the other end. The silver lining was that X shot 5-11 from three in the half and was able to cobble together enough to go into the half trailing by just 5 on the back of a mini run.

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The momentum quickly faded as DePaul restored its lead to 10 almost immediately. For a few minutes, the teams just traded buckets, as at least Xavier’s offense was firing. Unfortunately, the trading thing then stopped, and DePaul took full control of the game. That brings us back to the low point of the game. 13:35 to play, and X trailed 57-39. Then began a slow crawl back into the game.

And boy was it slow. These guys did not charge back into this one, but they got there eventually. Filip Borovicanin (16/6/4) drove for a layup and hit a couple of free throws in the span of three possessions. Free throws from Malik Messina-Moore (13/1/3)…

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Publish date : 2026-02-01 01:40:00

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