Musketeer Madness

Clearly, Mack's recruiting is evident that it wasn't well balanced. First, the fact that they have no seniors (although Gates left early) and only two juniors is indicative of the poor recruiting Mack did. He did have a strong class with Scruggs, Marshall, Hardin, and Ridder but the one constant is that his best players are non-shooters (Goodin, Marshall, Scruggs, and Jones)and it will impact this team certainly this year and likely for a couple. My hope is that Hardin will continue to gain confidence and shoot well. The biggest issue with X is without having shooters (other than Welage) they are so easy to guard, No lead is safe with this team because they will go on massive scoring droughts. Goodin is just a bad shooter. He even lost confidence as he kept trying to drive into a sagged defense and couldn't get good close looks. Steele has a heck of a challenge to find the right mix with this team. I would give Steele credit in the fact that while their D was awful the first three games, there appears to be some improvement. My only complaint is while Mack saddled this team with no outside shooting, i believe that Welage needs to play much more, As much as anything to open up the middle for their many slashers. At least today, i would say the same thing about hardin. He hit 3 3s so they had to guard him. At one point, X was under 10% 3 point shooting in second half yet their offense only afforded that kind of shot -or the defense was giving them those shots. i certainly would have liked to see Hardin/Wellage out there to stretch the defense. Also, i heard before the season Steele say this could be the best defensive team in Xavier history and we would see a lot quicker tempo and transition. At least after five games, i have not seen any evidence of that.

Its going to be a long year. I just hope they improve each week. NIT is the best this team can hope for but really doubt that. They may not win a true road game all year. Hope i'm wrong.

The team certainly has holes and shooting from outside is one of them but it is early to predict no true road wins. They almost beat a #8 team on a neutral court. Hardin has shown a stroke in 2 straight games. Shot selection, inconsistent defense and sloppy play has been a huge factor in these losses. That may certainly continue all season but if it is cleaned up they will have a solid year.

Travis needs to figure out the right rotation which will likely need to be flexible based on foul trouble and match-ups. He certainly needs to impose more discipline and cut stretches of bad play short with better use of timeouts. I don't expect much this year but there is some hope that this team can put together an ok season.