2026-27 Season Preview: Jovan Milicevic

A year ago, Xavier fans approached the upcoming season with an overwhelming sense of unfamiliarity. The coach was gone, all of the players were gone, there was not a single person on scholarship at the school who had played a single minute in a Xavier uniform when the ball tipped for the first time. This year Xavier has (at least) one such player and, perhaps more important than the fact that he gives fans a familiar face to root for, he’s really good.

After following Richard Pitino from New Mexico, Milicevic’s first forays as a Musketeers showed what a mercurial player he could be. He staggered out of the gate in three buy games, reaching his nadir for the season early with one point in 12 minutes against Santa Clara, but rebounded by leading Xavier with 15 at Iowa and putting up 40 in two games at the Charleston Classic. He had a fairly inefficient 12 in the Shootout, but bounced back with 17 against Missouri State to seemingly right the ship before Big East play began. The transition from non conference play to conference play last year was notably hard on Xavier, and no one personified that more than Milicevic. His first 5 outings produced a line of 4.4/4/1.4 on .250/.313/.333 shooting to go with 1.8 turnovers per game and 6.4 fouls per 40 minutes. His lone real highlight of that stretch came at Georgetown where his three pointer with 4:01 left put Xavier on top and produced the final lead change of what had been a back and forth contest.

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The tide finally turned on January 10th when Providence came to town and Milicevic posted 22/8/1 on 8-12 from the floor and 4-5 from deep in just 26 minutes as he exorcised all but one of the trends that had haunted him early on. The one he didn’t kick, and never really did, was foul trouble. Milicevic fouled out that day and also in the next game. And the game after that one. And then the next one, too. And then three more times later in the season. From that point on, Milicevic was incredibly productive, scoring 14.4…

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Publish date : 2026-10-20 17:31:00

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