Just How Fortunate Are We?

[picknroll]

You know, here we have a small private school in the Midwest with less than 10,000 enrollment with one of the best athletic programs, especially b-ball, in America. Step back and think about how fortunate we are to have a program like this in our town, basically year-after-year-after-year. Fr. Graham, Mike Bobinski, Sister Rose and Sean Miller are all great leaders in their respective capacities. It all starts with these special people who are commited to excellence. Yes, we occasionally bitch and moan about this and that, but we are, indeed, very fortunate. It's a great time to be a Xavier fan!

[GrimeTime]

Oh sure... interject common sense and appreciation into the mix and ruin our perfectly good outlet for whining. Jeeze... some people!

[Stl_XUFan]

How about with less than 4,000 undergraduate enrollment. Xavier way outplays it size.

[Mr. Neutral]

You're right. For those of us who saw nothing but mediocre (or worse) basketball while in school, these last 20+ years still seem like some good dream that we keep thinking is going to end at some point. And for a school of our size to get 5 successful coaches in a row is almost unheard of. I keep expecting us to come up with a clunker, just because it happens to everybody.

But X has won while still not selling out its soul. Not all our players have been saints; nobody's are at the the high Div. I level. But our graduation rate and the type of players we have on our roster stack up with anyone, and better than most.

Plus, Dana's and City View are still open, which matters greatly to we older alums!

[bourbonman]

Mr N nailed it. To overcome the poor program we had during the dark years to rise to this platform is awesome. I just hope it's not the peak.

[muskienick]

I'm unsure how far back Gary's Xavier history with XU goes, but my interest in Muskie basketball goes back to the Ned Wulk years. I can attest to the fact that there were no years lower than those of the coaching tenures of George Krajack and Dick Campbell. They were unable to do with so little administrative commitment what Ned Wulk, Jim McCafferty, and Don Ruberg did: that is --- achieve a level of excellence just above mediocrity (for the most part). Even Tay Baker, who followed Krajack and Campbell, got better results even though he was already in semi-retirement mode. (Tay preferred to play 18 at Clovernook Country Club than make a recruiting junket to Appleton, Wisconsin or Muncie, Indiana, or even Rabbit Hatch, Kentucky. His Xavier rosters looked like an alumni register of high schools in the tri-state area. If he couldn't recruit 'em by phone or the occasional visit to a local high school game, he wasn't interested.)

So, bourbonman, you couldn't be more correct! We are fortunate indeed! And that might be just the reason that folks like me who go back to Xavier's "Dark Ages" agonize sometimes when we see current Xavier teams play a little sloppy basketball. We are shuddering at the thought of what could be! The vast majority of the few of us who are left from among the 400-500 season ticket holders from that Dark Era now see a different type of Xavier coach, a different type of Xavier recruiting, a different type of Xavier commitment to its athletic programs, and a totally different level of facilities in use on the Xavier campus. Those things help us forget what once was. But they can never totally erase those dull aches from our guts!

[Masterofreality]

Xavier "Plays Big". When people who I talk to that ask me where I went to school, and I tell them Xavier, they'll invariably say that, "that's a pretty big school with good basketball, right?"

When I tell them that the total enrollment is about 6,000 with only about 3,200 undergrads, they can't believe it- especially the ones that have seen home games on TV.

This is "The Golden Age of Xavier Basketball".

[Mr. Neutral]

nick, I showed up at X in Sept. '68, just after Bob Quick had graduated (and he was part of my reason for coming to X, believe it or not), just in time to catch the end of the Luther Rackley Era, followed by the Chris Hall Era, followed by the Helmers-Binegar-Alt teams that had some good players, but not enough.

The teams in my fours years at X had records ranging from 5-21 to 12-14. That's why many/most of the guys of my era are more cynical than grads of later years; we keep expecting the bubble to burst, based on our own first-hand experiences of X not having the talent, coaching or resources to match up with the big boys. We do now, in many ways, and it's great to watch, but old habits die hard.

[muskiefan82]

It's when I think back to watching X play Union, Ky from my bench seat at the Schmidt Fieldhouse, little coca cola truck in the corner selling drinks, that I realize just how far this program has come and what has been accomplished.

X moved to the Gardens and things began to change.....Things were a little more big time. Fresh off an NCAA appearance, X beat Nebraska and Ohio St at the Gardens in what is still one of the loudest games I can remember...The program had really started.....A thankyou to Bob Staak....

The winning continued with Pete once Bob moved on to Wake Forest (what is it about that school?) Continued success and a Sweet 16 appearance as an MCC school! Wow! The continued winning in the Tourney over supposedly bigger schools (Missouri, Georgetown, etc) brought continued success and better recruits. Pete left us for Providence (he did take Providence to a Final Four) and then to Virginia, but we received Skip back from Loyola, Md after giving them a little of the Xavier mystique for a year. (Sure do miss him. He was a great man.) Skip brought this team into the Atlantic 10 and into the Cintas Center fulfilling a dream many of us had had since Schmidt Fieldhouse.

The Cintas was possible BECAUSE of the success of the program. A small private school fully funding an arena like the Cintas was amazing....It helped to have a few guys with NBA salaries to help out too....but Skip moved on too...(again to Wake Forest) and the program continued. Beaknose...I mean Thad Matta, came here from Butler and took the program to an entirely new level of expectation..Win in the regular season, win the conference, and WIN in the postseason....An Elite Eight? From the worst beginning of a season in ages? I'm not a fan of what Thad did when he left, but he definitely raised the bar to a completely new level....and then he bolted for Ohio State....
...and now we have Sean Miller in his fourth season..growing and learning with every game...two straight NCAA tournament appearances.....with what should have been at the least a Sweet 16 appearance last year.....
This team is deep, they are talented, they are tested and tried. The coach is better than ever and primed to do some serious damage in the tourney...
The recruits coming in are the best on paper in Xavier's history...
The question was, "Just how fortunate are we?"
Very. I can't think of more than a few programs that could rival what this program has accomplished...and if you look at non-BCS schools there is no school like X.
We are very fortunate and I, for one, am very glad that my father decided that I should become a muskiefan at a very young age so that I could enjoy watching this program grow from nothing to the power it is today

[CarlosTheJackal]

Thanks to MOR for getting our Musketeer Fast Facts correct. We are a very small university. We get way more bang for our educational and athletic buck than one could reasonably expect.

I remember sitting on the floor behind the basket in the 1984 NIT games at the Gardens and thinking THAT was the golden age..beating Ohio freakin State.

Then I drove up to Indy to watch us play Missouri and Duke, and I thought THAT was the golden age. Then a return trip to watch us beat Georgetown. Surely it couldn't get any better than that.

I HAD to drive down to Atlanta after watching us wreak revenge on St. Joe and Dayton in the UD arena during The Run. A little school like Xavier only gets one chance like this, right? I was SO freaked that Xavier fans were out numbering and drowning out Duke, the famous Dookies.

We have been incredibly fortunate. Not lucky, fortunate, and the future looks even brighter. For those who joined Musketeer madness -- the fandom, not the site --- in the 80s or 90s, it all seems so obvious. For the Dark Ages alums, its like going to heaven without having to give up beer or sex.