On February 1, 2005, Anberlin released the album Never Take Friendship Personal, which included the track “The Feel Good Drag”. The chorus of that song declared “this was over before, before it ever began,” which is only interesting in that Xavier scored the first 13 points of this basketball and functionally buried it as a contest before the first media timeout.
Mount St. Mary’s won the tip, and that’s pretty much where the good news ends for them. Xavier’s scoring on the season opened with a Jovan
Milicivec three. Next time down had the same result for Xavier. Mike Nwoko and Filip Borovicanin scored at the rim, then a three from Big Fil sent the teams to the media timeout with Xavier up 13-0.
It continued from there for the Muskies. Xavier was up 15-1 before Mount St. Mary’s made their first bucket and 29-3 before they made their second. It came from all angles for the home team in the first half, with 15 of the first 16 buckets being assisted and 9 different players making a shot before the final media timeout of the first half.
It wasn’t all sunshine and roses for Xavier. Their first half production was marred by turnovers, with 10 of them before the break. This sentence is written like there’s a second bad thing, but it’s hard to say exactly what it would be. Gabriel Pozzato went 0-2 from the line in X’s first trip there, so I guess that’s not optimal, but Chance Westry redeemed that with a 3-3 showing of his own to get the team to 60% by the half. Mostly it was exactly what you expect to see in the first half of a bit game from a Big East team.
Xavier came out of the half like a team that believed they already had the game won, probably because they already had the game won. Having hit the half up 51-16, they let The Mount drop an 8-3 run to open things up. Ruben Dominguez stemmed the tide with a three, and Xavier went into the first media timeout clinging to a 57-24 lead.
A 7-0 run out of the U16 righted the ship for Xavier, not that there was much doubt anyway. There are only so many ways to describe an absolute boat race, and I’m running out of them. X stayed active on defense, made the extra pass on offense, and kept the pace high. Only some poor ball security and another 0-2 trip from the line for Gabriel Pozzato brought down what was otherwise an exultant mood.
It was all over but the crying from there, as though it hasn’t been before. A 7-0 run is usually a meaningful event in a college basketball game; it took one from Mount St. Mary’s to cut the deficit to 40 with just over 9 minutes to play. From there, it was hard for spectators and participants alike to stay focused as the only question to arise was whether or not Xavier would double up their opponents. In a game that KenPom saw as a 25-point Muskies victory, the Muskies led by more than that for the last 28 minutes of play.
There are a lot of ways to go to 1-0 on the year; Xavier has explored nearly three dozen of them consecutively since they last went to 0-1. “Comprehensively” may well be the best of them, and that’s what we saw today. No doubt the Muskies will face sterner opposition as the season goes on, but you can only beat the team in front of you. X did that today, and they did it in a fashion that makes it understandable for their fans to see it and start wishing for big things for this season.
The Richard Pitino Era started with Xavier scraping past Marist by 4, holding off a furious charge down the stretch. A year on, they’ve pieced apart an overmatched Mount St. Mary’s and, at least for the day, looked the part of a high-major team with real aspirations of earning an at-large bid.
