It seems like it has been a long time since we had a Xavier game. The last time the Musketeers played, Ed Cooley threw a water bottle at a little kid. It has been so long since then that his very serious and not at all a complete joke suspension has already been served. In between we’ve had Christmas, which means we are now somewhere in that week between the holidays. I know it’s Monday, because I worked yesterday, beyond that there’s not a lot I could tell you about the world at large at the moment.
Xavier is back in action on Wednesday against UConn. Weirdly, Dan Hurley, an excellent coach, has something of a bad reputation despite not doing much beyond being funny in press conferences and aggressive in games. Ed Cooley, a thoroughly mediocre coach if he’s that good, is somehow seen as some sort of paragon of virtue despite very publicly getting an OVI and cheating on his wife.
UConn is not Georgetown. The Huskies are seventh in the KenPom, have lost once (to second ranked Arizona), and have beaten BYU, Illinois, Kansas, Florida, and Texas already. KenPom gives Xavier a 13% chance of winning this game and doesn’t have them as anything better than a toss-up in any game until they host DePaul on the 31st of January. That’s a stretch of at DePaul, at Marquette, Providence at home, Butler at home, at Creighton, St. John’s at home, and at Seton Hall where Xavier’s best computer number chance of winning is 52%.
This is not going to be an easy month in an already not easy season. The games at DePaul and Marquette, though, are hardly unwinnable (and KP doesn’t have them as such, mind you). There is also the chance of a shock win in there. Would it really be so surprising to beat Butler at home? The simple fact, though, is that this team isn’t good enough to have a set of games coming up in which you can comfortably pencil in positive results.
Which doesn’t mean they aren’t good enough to win games. Just, not easily. Looking ahead the road is more than a little rocky. KenPom’s predictive metric has Xavier finishing 7-13 in the Big East. Bart Torvik agrees. That means a Wednesday game in the Big East tournament and a very long row to hoe to get to a possible championship game and the chance it would bring to make the tournament.
But that’s all in the future. A very hard month of games starts on Wednesday. We’ll have a pod and preview out before then. Hope you all had a great Christmas and are ready for New Year’s. This team promises to be fun and entertaining at the very least. Sometimes, that’s all you can ask for.
