Villanova Game thread 02/17/2018

[clevelandmuskie]

Agree with many of the posts, we have to get better on D. MAYBE this is a good wakeup call to get better, best thing to happen is for us not to be in Villanova's region. We played them at home at full strength and they were not. Kaiser Gates is one dimensional and he is in a terrible slump. Got to get him going or stop playing him. Agree that T. Jones cant buy a basket, I would lean more on the seniors at the 5 and play Kanter and O'Meara more. Lets win the rest of our BE games!! Go Muskies and keep the faith!!

[madness31]

Wright owns Mack. It is a knock on Mack. He is a mediocre coach. He is a great recruiter. He should be a well paid assistant. Pulling in great players for a strategist to mold into a dominant team. Did the team fold, yes but it is again bad coaching. Tre was taking stupid shots in the first half and that caused the rest of the team to start playing 1 on 1. Mack didn't call a TO. Mack also pulled the 1 player playing at a high level because it was his turn in the rotation. Macura was not tired and was not making mistakes at that time. He was simply knocking down shots and finding open teammates. He sits and comes back in and is more or less a non factor. Seriously, what could have been the logic? I've seen JP tired and he most definitely wasn't. I've seen him make poor decisions and deserve to be pulled (at least once Mack actually did pull him - one of Mack's better moments as a coach, only wish he would do it to the countless other players - Tu, Lyons, Bluiett, etc when they are doing foolish things on the court).

Obviously pulling JP should not have been the difference in the game but combine that with the fact that Bluiett was playing poorly and he stayed in instead of JP and suddenly you have a double digit deficit. Then you combine it with the traditional Mack defensive strategy of try not to get in the way of the other team when they have the ball and suddenly you have a real problem.

[xavier3034]

Here comes madness31 with some of the worst trolling I’ve ever seen. Go back to your uc page and worry about scoring. Overall a terrible game for the bigs. Marshall needs to learn that he can pass it out when three people come on him on his drive. Of course it doesn’t help that they hit a bunch of threes with hands in their faces. But to come out of these last two weeks being 3-1 was really big!!! I feel a lot of us forget that two weeks ago we would of loved to be 3-1 and we should feel pretty good that we were able to pull out some close ones. Now to finish the regular season strong and try and get a one seed in the tourney!!! Let’s go Xavier

[bluegrass]

Here comes madness31 with some of the worst trolling I’ve ever seen. Go back to your uc page and worry about scoring. Overall a terrible game for the bigs. Marshall needs to learn that he can pass it out when three people come on him on his drive. Of course it doesn’t help that they hit a bunch of threes with hands in their faces. But to come out of these last two weeks being 3-1 was really big!!! I feel a lot of us forget that two weeks ago we would of loved to be 3-1 and we should feel pretty good that we were able to pull out some close ones. Now to finish the regular season strong and try and get a one seed in the tourney!!! Let’s go Xavier

It's just the frustration of always losing to Nova. If we had lost to Creighton and beaten them today everyone would be thrilled.

[xavier3034]

Agree it’s frustrating but we got to be able to look at the big picture and that is that we have put ourselves in a perfect position to try and get our first number one seed!!!

[bmuskies]

Wright owns Mack. It is a knock on Mack. He is a mediocre coach. He is a great recruiter. He should be a well paid assistant. Pulling in great players for a strategist to mold into a dominant team. Did the team fold, yes but it is again bad coaching. Tre was taking stupid shots in the first half and that caused the rest of the team to start playing 1 on 1. Mack didn't call a TO. Mack also pulled the 1 player playing at a high level because it was his turn in the rotation. Macura was not tired and was not making mistakes at that time. He was simply knocking down shots and finding open teammates. He sits and comes back in and is more or less a non factor. Seriously, what could have been the logic? I've seen JP tired and he most definitely wasn't. I've seen him make poor decisions and deserve to be pulled (at least once Mack actually did pull him - one of Mack's better moments as a coach, only wish he would do it to the countless other players - Tu, Lyons, Bluiett, etc when they are doing foolish things on the court).

Obviously pulling JP should not have been the difference in the game but combine that with the fact that Bluiett was playing poorly and he stayed in instead of JP and suddenly you have a double digit deficit. Then you combine it with the traditional Mack defensive strategy of try not to get in the way of the other team when they have the ball and suddenly you have a real problem.

I agree he does have a shorter leash on Macura than he does on Bluiett. Bluiett was not playing well taking bad shots and not defending well but he pulls Macura who was the one player showing no fear and getting stops. But at critical time he was not on the floor and letting other players who had no business shooting 3's taking bad shots. Should of played all his seniors 40 mins in this game. No excuse.

[oldhoopster2]

Lot of people on here are all over Scruggs, but the comeback happened with Scruggs on defense and JP sitting. JP can’t guard quick guys and Scruggs can. Paul’s biggest mistake was going back at the Nova player causing a technical and putting himself on the bench for 6-7 minutes. Admit it or not, we needed Scruggs. And why weren’t others letting him know someone was coming behind him. Agree that Mack takes hot players out too often but this loss is not just on Scruggs. Our bigs have been great and carried us to several victories but today the had a bad game. If Jones makes the layup, X is only down one and Scruggs has two fouls rather than four. That sequence ended the X momentum and brought life into a team that was falling apart. Mack’s smartest move, take out both JP and Tre to try and get a stop at the end of the first half. We need them on offense but surely don’t on defense.

[thecoach]

This isn't as complicated or mysterious as folks make Nova's ownership of X to be. The reality is in every contest X allows Nova to control the tempo and play at their pace. Pretty much takes the bigger guys out of it, as a guy like Kanter or O'mara cannot stay with a smaller player. If they are ever to be successful against them they need to play much more deliberately on offense and make Nova work defensively, and mix it up on defense to slow them down. We did really neither today and it was another convincing loss. I'm not really sure this team can give a lot of looks on defense as quite a few of the players are just not fundamentally sound on that end of the court. When you're bringing in Scruggs for defense that says a lot as he's nowhere near a good defender. It will be interesting to see the team next year after losing all the offense, but until then here's to hoping we can outscore folks. It's definitely doable in this Big East with the exception of Nova.

[xu koop scoop]

Someone look up Nova's 3 Pt % vs XU in our 1-10 BE stretch vs Nova the past 5 yrs. I think it's over 40%. Look up ours vs Nova in same stretch. It may be 30% if we're lucky. Not only that, but they take twice as many 3's as us - or close to it. Many of their 3's were contested, which left them open near the rim as we were worried about their outside game. They OOZE confidence vs us every game. Maybe we can pull a 1985 Nova in reverse. That year GTown beat Nova 3 times (Including Conference Tourney) before Nova shot 65% or so in NCAA Finals to take down Gtown.

[pki1998]

Guys I understand the emotional responses. What i don't understand is calling out some of our young players. I think Scruggs (over the last ten games) and Marshall (all season) with the help of the coaching staff, have learned from their mistakes. While the lost, and the continued domination of us by Nova is disappointing, there are teaching moments that I am sure the coaching staff will use to make us a better team. Hopefully that will have us bettered prepared for the Big East and NCAA tournaments.

For people questioning Mack as a coach, are you serious? He's the winningest coach in Xavier History, makes getting to the sweet 16 seem like an average season, has gotten us to our highest seed ever (and looking to improve that this year), and has gotten us to our highest rankings, all while playing against the toughest schedule that any Xavier coach has ever faced. Any statement that he is not a good coach is just ridiculous.