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Muskies Rediscovering Their Rotation!!
By
Andy Mac Williams,
1/15/2012
 | | Brad Redford gets held and fouled as he drives by the defense.[enlarge] Photo by Bob Stevens |  | | Freshmen Dez Wells collides with a St. Bonaventure defender as he attempts to slash to the basket.[enlarge] Photo by Bob Stevens |  | | Travis Taylor lays in two points off the backboard.[enlarge] Photo by Bob Stevens |
Xavier started quickly and seldom let up in Saturday's 77-64 A-10 win over a decent physical St. Bonnies team. The Muskies are streaking now with 3 wins in a row, an overall 12-5 record and a 3-1 mark in the conference-tied for first with Dayton and UMass. The victories over Fordham,Duquesne and SBU have featured a re-emergence of the bench. Chris Mack is using 10 players at will.
Against SBU Kenny Frease ran into mild foul trouble again and tweaked a heal and ankle. He played just 13 minutes with no points-3 rebounds and 2 assists. When he was in, Frease played scarppy defense against Bonnies' star forward Andrew Nicholson, but combinations of Andre Walker,Jeff Robinson and Travis Taylor didn't miss many beats guarding Nicholson.
He scored 20 but snared just 7 rebounds and turned it over 5 times and he failed to clog the middle defensively as XU for the most part got great shots. Nicholson showed NBA scouts he's a deadly jump shooter but he wasn't much of a factor around the rim at either end of the court.
The Muskies might have turned the game into an abject blow-out but they missed 5 dunks.
Hopefully,Frease will be at full go Wednesday nite against St Joe's at Cintas (7PM-Fox Sports Ohio). SJU has 3 good BIGS-CJ Aiken, Ronald Roberts and Hofstra transfer Halil Kanacevic. Frease will be needed down on the block.
XU ground down SBU with nasty sticky first half defense outscoring the Bonnies 34-21. S shot just 25%FG(1-8 from 3). X overcame some adversity. The officials called Tu Holloway and Mark Lyons for a combined 4 charges and allowed Bonnies' guard Eric Mosely to hand check Tu almost non-stop. Thus the Muskies turned it over 11 times and Lyons was limited to 11 minutes(but he scored 11 points). T
he zebras re-read their rule book especially the section labelled block-charge at halftime and Xavier cut down drastically on TOs and guarded with fewer fouls in the second 20 minutes. Muskie free throws were fine(15-19). Don't look now but the FT% is climbing steadily!!
Jeff Robinson was excellent around the basket scoring 13 points on 6-7 shooting in just 20 minutes and he guarded well. Brad Redford hit double figures (10 points) for the first time since his knee injury(2-3 from three,4-4 FTs plus a big steal right before halftime that led to a run-out lay-up). He's moved ahead of Dee Davis into the third guard role averaging 17 minutes over the past 3 games plus 8PPG. He's rebounded well and passed well and stepped in to draw charges. His three point makes delight the Cintas crowd almost as much as a Dez Wells' dunk.
Wells scored just 7 against SBU but his 9 rebounds and 3 assists were huge and he's stepping up on defense also. The Muskies played share ball well again with 20 assists on 27 field goals.
Combine the stops on defense with the sharing on offense and you have a team with spurtability. 8-10-12 point runs are the norm now.
Andre Walker filled the stat sheet again with 8 points-6 rebounds-7 assists and just 1 turnover. He found Mark Lyons with an amazing cross-court skip pass from the right baseline to the left wing for a wide open three.
Tu continues to plow new ground. He ran out of bounds chasing a loose ball along press row and stopped briefly on his way back to the floor to scoop up a handful of popcorn from one of the All for One Club high rollers. He knows how to enjoy himself.
Kudos to Chris Mack and his coaching staff for sticking to their core principals through all the adversity. With available bodies and renewed confidence XU is playing at a high level again. Actually, the offense is much more efficient than in the first 8 games.
The competition ramps up this week. St Joe's has good guards and plenty of size. They're 2-2 in the league. More on the Hawks later.
It's Dayton at UD Arena Saturday at 1PM. The Flyers are 3-1 in the A-10. They beat La Salle Saturday nite. Chris Johnson played after missing the St Bonnies loss with a concussion. It's a crazy race in the Atlantic 10 with with the Top 10 teams separated by just 1 game and no unbeatens left only 4 games into the league schedule.
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