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Atlantic City Diary: Day One, Year Two!!
By
Andy Mac Williams,
3/12/2008
Thanks to Xavier student Tom McGraw I'm blogging from the Boardwalk again. XU is about to practice at a local Junior College and they now know who their Quarterfinal opponent will be Thursday at noon here in AC. It's backyard rival Dayton. The Flyers won their first round 8-9 match-up against St. Louis by a silly millimeter 63-62 in overtime.
The Flyers blew a double digit second half lead making just 4 of 11 free throws down the stretch and forgetting to press their size advantage by posting up their big guys. Marcus Johnson bailed UD out scoring all 8 of their points in the OT.
SLU limited Dayton star Brian Roberts to just 5 points and 4 shots,but on the plus side for UD Johnson scored 16. Wisconsin transfer Mickey Perry found his shot and potted a career high 11 points and Andres Sandoval totalled 10.
The Flyers played maybe their best overall basketball since their 14-1 start in the first half leading SLU 34-25. They seemed to use Roberts as a decoy and the secondary players managed to score. UD employed long patient possessions and ran the offense through the post.
Defensively, Dayton limited the undersized Billikens to a perimeter game. It boiled down to SLU's two good junior guards Tommie Liddell and Kevin Lisch. UD used a lot of players and virtually every combination clicked.
Second half-different game-UD struugled to score-tossed the ball around the perimeter and sort of fell back on a well guarded Brian Roberts. The missed free throws have been a consistent negative theme.Dayton shoots just 65%. That's 11% lower than XU. Still UD managed to win despite the warts.
The Flyers have rallied late with 4 straight wins to push their record to 21-9 with a bubblish 35 RPI. They inject themselves into serious NCAA at large consideration with an upset of Xavier tomorrow.
We all know the history. X swept 3 from UD last season including a Quarterfinal A-10 tourney win here. This year more of the same!! The Muskies won big at Cintas and toughed out an ugly 57-51 victory at UD Arena a couple weeks ago.
X is the better team-more cohesive-more balanced-grittier defensively but Drew Lavender's utility is still in question despite an active full week of practice. UD has never figured Drew out. Dayton will be motivated with an NCAA bid on the line while X is already assurred of a berth in the Big Show.
The thinking here from ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi who does color for St Joe's radio is that Xavier might not get an NCAA "2" seed even if they win 3 games here in Atlantic City. It would take a sweep plus plenty of help including losses by Stanford, Wisconsin, Texas, Georgetown, Louisville and others for the Muskies to make the "2" line.
The game may be close and X certainly has the edge in tht scenario with better free throw shooting and a history of late game success. X has usually found a way to slow Roberts and make him inefficient. Stanley Burrell has locked him up.
UD will need a lot of secondary scoring from the athletes Charles Little and Marcus Johnson and the post player Kurt Huelsman.
Defensively, UD must keep XU under 70 points and that will be a problem.
I like X to advance.
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