Let’s start with the low bar to clear: as long as our coach doesn’t assault a small child with a projectile, this season will be mostly ok. Of course, Xavier could always schedule a throwaway game so they could sternly pretend to have disciplined the coach. That kind of behavior is usually saved for guys who have picked up an OVI and cheated on their wives, though. One day we can aspire to having a coach so classy.
Xavier is currently 102nd in the KenPom and 122nd in NET. Neither of those are numbers
that belong to a team that will challenge for an at-large bid into the tournament. There was some rumbling on Twitter when an account announced that Xavier’s at-large chances were gone. Of course they aren’t actually, but they are in a realistic scenario. The Musketeers could go on some sort of run where they beat UConn twice and take St. John’s on the road, but that’s probably not going to happen.
So what should we be hoping for this season? It’s hard to know in an NIL world. Are we still hoping for a roster building kind of season? Is there even a world in which we are happy to see All Wright, Jovan Milicevic, Anthony Robinson, and Gabriel Pozzatto become the base of next year’s team? Will any of them even be here next year? Maybe Filip Borovicanin will have another year of eligibility. No one, and that’s not an exaggeration, knows.
So maybe roster building isn’t the goal here. Sure, we want those guys to be back and be the very solid base they seem to be, but the odds are against Xavier in the current world. The top four teams in minutes continuity this season are service academies and Ivy League schools. There are only 20 teams in college basketball that returned even 50% of their minutes. Just a decade ago 171 teams did. Even in 2023 there were 121. Xavier is already losing four guys for sure. Who knows how many other guys will be on the way out.
So, keep some of the roster. That’s a goal. What else can Xavier do this year? The value of the NIT is open to debate. It has always been something of a consolation prize, but the NCAA seems, weirdly, determined to make it both more and less important.
That’s a confusing statement, so let me flesh it out for you. The NCAA has made the NIT a 32 team tournament that now culminates on the same weekend and in the same city as the NCAA tournament. That’s actually pretty cool. The NIT semis are on Thursday, April 2nd, the final comes that Sunday at the end of a day in which the D2 and D3 championship games are played in the same building in a triple header that should bring a level of zip to the NIT (and those other games) that it tends to miss as a standalone event. No one really cares about the NIT unless their team is in it or they are gambling on it.
That’s a really positive development. This is the NCAA, though, so you know they will stupid it up. And yes, they did. There are 16 exempt bids into the tournament. How does one get those, you ask? Well you have the best KNIT of any team in your conference that hasn’t already been selected for the NCAA if you are in one of the top 12 conferences. Except the SEC and ACC. They automatically get two exempt bids. Why? Because ESPN owns the broadcast rights to the ACC, SEC, and NIT. Sporting qualification doesn’t matter, money does.
Oh, and what is the KNIT? Well, it’s a stupid number that the NCAA uses that adds up seven different computer numbers and the lower you total, the better. But wait, I hear you ask, doesn’t the NCAA have its own proprietary computer number that it uses to select teams for the actual tournament? Yes, it does, but it doesn’t use the NET for the NIT. There is no reason why. They just don’t. Regular season champs with a good KNIT and then some at-large teams are picked as well. I’d get into how, but it’s all too dumb to waste more time on.
So Xavier could play in that depending on the whims of the cosmos. There are also the CBI, CIT, and Crown, none of which are worth entering.
So if the NCAA is likely out, team building is a shot in the dark, and the NIT is a mess, what should Xavier Nation hope for out of this season? Honestly, it’s a little hard to tell. Here’s a handful of Christmas suggestions:
Live for moments
Tre Carroll in the Shootout was amazing. The long inexorable climb back against Georgetown was a lot of fun to watch. Ed Cooley decompensating and drilling a small child with a water bottle was both flabbergasting and hilarious. There will be a lot more moments this season. Jump off the couch with the kids when All Wright sinks a three to beat Butler. Celebrate a Borovicanin triple-double against Marquette. There is a ton of fun to be had in every single game in a season. Enjoy them.
Be the antagonist
Someone has to be the bad guy on Twitter. Why not us? Ask if Ed Cooley is a good coach. Ask why he only got an utterly meaningless one game suspension for committing a crime on video. Tweet Wes Miller Zillow listings for places on Hilton Head. Help Shaka Smart with his resume. There is somewhere deep inside all of us that longs to be the hater. Let that guy out a bit. For sports reasons. We don’t espouse real life hate.
Hope for the miracle
Why not us? I, personally, don’t care about the NIT, anything involving made for TV basketball, or whatever else happens after Selection Sunday. [ed. note: This is not the position of everyone at Banners.] There’s no reason not to hope for a miracle. Xavier burned up basically any chance they had for an at-large by losing to Creighton… by 41… at home. You can erase a lot of that by beating UConn in Storrs, though. Do the double over them and Nova and suddenly that resume has four Q1 wins on it. Likely? Of course not, but who cares about that, this is sports. Miracles of a sort happen every year. Maybe this one is ours.
