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Momentum Aplenty for A-10!!
By
Andy Mac Williams,
1/7/2008
Fox Sports might well have been the target of my wrath in this space. At 3PM Sunday Fox was still showing a lame Cleveland Cavaliers game when XU-Auburn was scheduled to start!! My anger was beginning to foment. Then my youngest son Sean, a tech-savvy Gen Y'er, called and calmly directed me to a free ESPN fullcourt feed on the Internet. Crisis averted!! Fox did a join in progress after the Cavs concluded and I saw every swish in the Muskies' 80-57 dismantling of Auburn.
The Tigers had no choice but to zone and XU shredded that defense. Open "3s" rained in. X beat them down the floor for lay-ups and found Derrick Brown for flushes.
The Muskies owned the boards. Auburn actually made some hay against the X pack line man defense early in each half while the Tigers were fresh. But XU went zone judiciously and mixed in more man later and the game evolved into a blow-out on the road against an SEC school.
Big progress from Arizona State a few weeks ago and the lone clunker for Xavier so far! ASU, by the way, lives by the zone. Auburn would man up if they had more healthy bodies. ASU also is playing better than any expert envisioned. The Sun Devils are 12-2 with an 8 game victory streak plus they won their first two PAC 10 games against Oregon and Oregon State.
So Xavier's difficult pre-conference schedule closes out at 12-3 with 4 straight blow-out wins. The numbers are glittering in wins over pwoer conference teams K-State, Virginia and Auburn. X sits 10th in the RPI with the 9th toughest schedule. The Muskies are back in the AP Poll. Inexplicably, XU garnered no votes at all in last week's USA TODAY/ESPN Coaches' Poll. 42 teams received support. Something's amiss here.
Among the voters are Dana Altman of Creighton, Miami's Charlie Coles, and Fang Mitchell of Coppin State. They all played X head to head. Plus Phil Martelli of St Joe's is on the panel and he'll play X at least twice. Maybe coaches don't really cast the ballots sometimes?? I can see SIDs, assistants, and team managers ignoring the Muskies, but not all 32 coaches.
X seems primed for the A-10 schedule which appears to open favorably for them with home games Wednesday against St. Bonnies and Saturday against Fordham. X ran the table in the league at Cintas last season (8-0) and that's the goal again this season.
The conference is much improved with four teams in the RPI top 20 (Dayton-7, XU-10, UMass-16, Rhode Island-17) and there's a group of 3 teams from RPI 50 to 70 (Duquesne-50, St Joe's-58, Temple-68). Xavier has to play every one of those top tier teams on the road expect for the Duquesnes Dukes. Winning four or more A-10 road games will be challenging so the Muskies need to hold serve at Cintas more than ever.
On the plus side of this improved league strength thing is the prospect that the A-10 will earn 3 or 4 NCAA bids, but that's a long way from certain.
St. Bonaventure has struggled ever since Jim Baron left Olean for Rhode Island. Jan Van Bredakoff was caught in a recruiting scandal (the welding degree thing) and Anthony Solomon never got things going. Now the job falls to Mark Schmidt, a no nonsense New Englander who worked under Skip Prosser at Xavier and did what he could to make Robert Morris competitive in Pittsburgh. If anybody can drag SBU to the top in the Atlantic 10, it's Schmitty.
He has former XU star Jeff Massey as his lead assistant. He has signed Canada's top big man for next season. Jimmy Baron beat Xavier out for a Canadian named Caswell Cyrus in the mid-1990's. Mark is wise to recruit north of the border.
The Bonnies are short on bodies. They play 7. 6-9 Michael Lee is their star and one of the league's best. He averages 18 ppg, 9 rebounds, and scored 24 in SBU's upset of Bucknell (65-62) last Saturday. 6-3 SR Zarryon Fereti had 21 against Bucknell. He averages 14 ppg plus 4 boards and shoots the "3" decently. Lee and Fereti are 2-3 in minutes played league-wide with a number in the high 30's.
Senior guard Tyler Relph can snipe from long range. He's a former NY State "Mr. Basketball" who transferred from West Virginia. 6-10 D'Lancy Carter is a JUCO transfer from Vincennes in Indiana. He's scoring 6 ppg with 7 rebounds. The other starter is 6-7 junior Tyler Benson who is not built for the rough going inside.
Off the bench come 6-3 Malcolm Eleby and 6-6 Hillary Haley - both freshmen. SBU struggles shooting the ball from the floor (41%) and from 3-point range (29%) - last in the A-10. The Bonnies attack the basket well though. They have made more free throws than the opposition attempts and shoot 75% from the line.
Mark took the job late, so he obviously needs time and recruiting classes. X won 92-66 at SBU last season. The Muskies have won 6 straight in the series. Things shouldn't change Wednesday night.
Also Wednesday in the A-10 it's URI at Dayton. Both teams are nationally rated. The Flyers own their longest win streak (11 games) in almost 40 years. Their frosh sensation Chris Wright is recovering from an ankle sprain. They will need him full go against Rhody's inside pair of Daniels and Seawright. URI has basically everybody back from a team that outmuscled XU in the A-10 tournament semis.
St Joe's opens at UMass. The Hawks have 4 losses but to Syracuse, Gonzaga, Creighton in OT and Holy Cross. The Minutemen beat Syracuse on the road and gave Vandy a great game in Nashville.
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