The Big East might be having a down year, but that doesn’t mean it’s not still a different beast than the non-conference roster. You can beat the Marist, UC, and Missouri states of the world, but that doesn’t mean you can get into the Big East. Xavier’s team, with the confidence the announcers praised, learned that the hard way today. Any hope this team had of getting into the mainstream conversation was dashed in the first 40 minutes of the conference season. So, without further ado, we return to the automatic offer or bankruptcy.
And conclusively. Xavier was the favorite in this game a long time ago. We wrote in our preview that Creighton would shoot a lot of 3-pointers. They made 33, many of them open as Xavier chased runner after runner too much, leaving the backside shooters open. Not since Lee Harvey Oswald have so many mediocre shooters had so much time. Austin Swartz shot 7-13 in this game and is still only shooting 36% this season.
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But sometimes you come across a team in a heater. That’s true. It is also true that sometimes you put the team in that heater. Xavier’s defense was absolutely atrocious in this game. The Bluejays shot 58% in the first half. That’s very hot. That was also his bad half. In the second half they shot 62.5%. Xavier shot 36.4% for the game, so it’s not like their offense was good, but it wouldn’t have mattered. One Xavier player posted an offensive efficiency over 100, Pape N’Diaye at 193. The next best was Roddie Anderson’s 89.
Do you want more fun numbers? This was the most points Xavier ever allowed on the Ribbons. This was the worst defeat in their history in the Cintas. The students were not there, halfway through the second half no one was there, and that is for the better. No one who watched this will want to watch Xavier basketball for a while. They certainly won’t want to pay for the privilege. For the first time in a long time, even the effort was poor. At some point, the musketeers realize that they were defeated.
That happens at some point in the games. It happened in this one before the half. Even after a 16-2 run at Creighton, Xavier was still doing well in this game. So they quickly allowed a 36-5 run. That pretty much ended this as a contest, as you can imagine. In the eighth minute of the first half, X was down six and struggling to recover. Eight minutes later they were down 27 points. That is almost incomprehensible.
This game functionally ended this season as one in which Xavier will make its way to the bubble. It doesn’t wash away the stench of a 41-point third-quarter loss at home. The Musketeers fell 19 spots in the KenPom, but will fall even further in the NET. There is nothing good to report here. The seeds sown in the first half against Missouri State have paid off. Xavier has been embarrassed.