Xavier Game Thread

[drbluejay]

Trey stepped up and stood out to win my standout player of the game. Thankfully Baylor kept shooting the ball last night.
The 2nd half crowd was very good from my section and from my view of the entire arena. Who cares what the crowd looks or sounds like on TV. It was a fun night for everyone in attendance.

[Chicagojayfan]

Another gutsy win by the team - now 6-1 in their last 7 in the BE, and 6-3 overall

Offensively -
116.4 offensive rating which is our second best offensive performance in the BE this year, and while Xavier may not be a great defensive team, they have some ability, and they've done well against some teams (really they've been pretty up and down defensively, even while winning).

One mark that's of interest: eFG% of .588 last night, second only to UConn who had a .640 eFG% against Xavier

Defensively:
106.8 defensive rating which isn't our best performance *our 4th worst of the year, but Xavier's generally been doing better than that against the BE. 106.8 is the 3rd lowest for them this year in the BE

They love to run and share the ball with quite a few good passers on their team, but got them to mostly play ISO ball with our drop coverage and they had the lowest Assist% of the season by far for them. We got them to take a lot of tough shots and they made a lot of them, to their credit.

Turnovers:
How the heck was this game this close? I think mostly due to turnovers converted to points. We didn't turn it over a lot, but they scored on virtually every turnover we had last night (most I've ever seen I think!).

Rebounding:
We gave up some offensive boards, but the ones they got hurt (similar to the turnovers). We had the second highest DRB% of any team against them this year and about middle of the pack in total rebounds.

Lots of great performances - Baylor and Trey were outstanding. Kalk was a huge difference maker. As others noted, Ashworth's been playing D. Olivari's been tearing quite a few teams up lately and we mostly held him in check last night - much due to Ashworth chasing him around aggressively. Add in another night w/ a great turnover ratio and he's working his way into shape for this team. Next up - hitting more consistent shots from 3

Miller did his usual job of hitting 3's and hustling aggressively as well, including a hard blockout that led to the foul and the Technical

I think this team is still a work in progress and that they can get even better than they are right now. Ashworth hitting some 3's will add a lot to the team, and a few days rest and maybe a bit of time to let the bench work it's way to seeing a bit more time in this upcoming stretch of games is the next step

time for a bit of a breather and some well earned rest for the team after 4 games in 11 days, including 2 road games and a 3-OT marathon!

[SDJay]

Another gutsy win by the team - now 6-1 in their last 7 in the BE, and 6-3 overall

Offensively -
116.4 offensive rating which is our second best offensive performance in the BE this year, and while Xavier may not be a great defensive team, they have some ability, and they've done well against some teams (really they've been pretty up and down defensively, even while winning).

One mark that's of interest: eFG% of .588 last night, second only to UConn who had a .640 eFG% against Xavier

Defensively:
106.8 defensive rating which isn't our best performance *our 4th worst of the year, but Xavier's generally been doing better than that against the BE. 106.8 is the 3rd lowest for them this year in the BE

They love to run and share the ball with quite a few good passers on their team, but got them to mostly play ISO ball with our drop coverage and they had the lowest Assist% of the season by far for them. We got them to take a lot of tough shots and they made a lot of them, to their credit.

Turnovers:
How the heck was this game this close? I think mostly due to turnovers converted to points. We didn't turn it over a lot, but they scored on virtually every turnover we had last night (most I've ever seen I think!).

Rebounding:
We gave up some offensive boards, but the ones they got hurt (similar to the turnovers). We had the second highest DRB% of any team against them this year and about middle of the pack in total rebounds.

Lots of great performances - Baylor and Trey were outstanding. Kalk was a huge difference maker. As others noted, Ashworth's been playing D. Olivari's been tearing quite a few teams up lately and we mostly held him in check last night - much due to Ashworth chasing him around aggressively. Add in another night w/ a great turnover ratio and he's working his way into shape for this team. Next up - hitting more consistent shots from 3

Miller did his usual job of hitting 3's and hustling aggressively as well, including a hard blockout that led to the foul and the Technical

I think this team is still a work in progress and that they can get even better than they are right now. Ashworth hitting some 3's will add a lot to the team, and a few days rest and maybe a bit of time to let the bench work it's way to seeing a bit more time in this upcoming stretch of games is the next step

time for a bit of a breather and some well earned rest for the team after 4 games in 11 days, including 2 road games and a 3-OT marathon!

Great write up!
Thanks again for your post game evaluations.

[SeattleJay]

Chicagojay, always great stuff.

Probably a different data source but Torvik ranked this game as our second worst defensive game of the season (trailing only the UNLV game). As you correctly point out, they hit a lot of really tough shots, particularly floaters.

[JacobPadilla]

I went a bit long on the Baylor takeover, Claude and Trey going back and forth and Ashworth leading the defensive effort in my gamer.

https://hurrdatsports.com/creighton-men ... st-xavier/

Bit confused about the "Baylor's getting cooked" comments from the game thread. The process is more important than the results, and a lot of the shots Claude made in the first half were the same ones he missed in the second. Most of them were tough looks. He had 18 points on 16 shooting possessions and no assists in the first half. Baylor did a really good job last night defensively, as did Creighton as a whole in terms of baiting Xavier into playing the way McDermott wanted them to play. Better ball security and Creighton wins fairly handily I think, especially with the way they finally got going from 3 in the second half.

Also, it seems like the common fallback to point to tired legs when shots aren't falling or things aren't going well, but if it was really that simple would they have been able to go 8-16 from 3 in the second half at the end of a grueling three games in seven days? I don't think the degree and impact of fatigue isn't really something we can judge from home. For those guys to make the plays they did down the stretch is a testament to their mental toughness and the work they've done with Jeremy Anderson to prepare themselves to play this way.

[3ontheway]

Baylor was getting shredded by Claude in the 1st half and looked very fatigued on D. The announcers mentioned it multiple times too. Claude missed a lot of shots in the 2nd half, thankfully.

It is not a knock on Baylor, its just common sense that he most likely has tired legs right now because of playing 99.9% of games over the last 2 weeks (one of them being 55 minutes very recently). Hopefully he gets a breather Saturday and can rest up.

And no doubt, to their credit Trey and Baylor hit huge shots in the last 8 minutes of that game despite, as common sense would dictate, having some fatigue. Maybe Bahe and Kugler were off in their assessment as well as they mentioned it multiple times.

[#RollJays]

I went a bit long on the Baylor takeover, Claude and Trey going back and forth and Ashworth leading the defensive effort in my gamer.

https://hurrdatsports.com/creighton-men ... st-xavier/

Bit confused about the "Baylor's getting cooked" comments from the game thread. The process is more important than the results, and a lot of the shots Claude made in the first half were the same ones he missed in the second. Most of them were tough looks. He had 18 points on 16 shooting possessions and no assists in the first half. Baylor did a really good job last night defensively, as did Creighton as a whole in terms of baiting Xavier into playing the way McDermott wanted them to play. Better ball security and Creighton wins fairly handily I think, especially with the way they finally got going from 3 in the second half.

Also, it seems like the common fallback to point to tired legs when shots aren't falling or things aren't going well, but if it was really that simple would they have been able to go 8-16 from 3 in the second half at the end of a grueling three games in seven days? I don't think the degree and impact and fatigue isn't really something we can judge from home. For those guys to make the plays they did down the stretch is a testament to their mental toughness and the work they've done with Jeremy Anderson to prepare themselves to play this way.

Baylor played his butt off last night. Claude is a really tough guard when you're navigating multiple screens while playing drop coverage. His mid range game and length to finish at the rim make it an even tougher assignment. Claude had to work really hard to get his 18 points in the first half and made a bunch of tough shots. Claude didn't want to work as hard in the 2nd half (obviously not used to playing the whole game like Baylor Ironman Scheierman) and went 0-8 settling more for 3s instead of getting into the paint, which isn't his game.

Also, don't think we had tired legs. We just played a team that 1-4 is very quick. Green, McKnight and Olivari are all 3 quicker than any guards we have. We were 11-28 from 3 last night and still missed half a dozen wide open 3s. We just need Ashworth to find his shot/confidence and we will have a bunch of 35%+ 3 point team shooting nights to finish off the year.

[LJay]

Another of life’s simple pleasures:

Settling in for a Wednesday night of Big East games after a Tuesday night solid win, aaaaaahhhh.

[#RollJays]

Baylor was getting shredded by Claude in the 1st half and looked very fatigued on D. The announcers mentioned it multiple times too. Claude missed a lot of shots in the 2nd half, thankfully.

Does Baylor get any credit for Claude going 0-8 in the 2nd half? On his 7-23 night (7-15 in the first half), he scored twice over Kalk on switches and once over Miller for an And 1. Baylor's worst defensive possession was the foul on the 3 point attempt. He got too close going by him on the contest allowing Claude to extend his right leg out unnaturally and sell the call.

[3ontheway]

Baylor was getting shredded by Claude in the 1st half and looked very fatigued on D. The announcers mentioned it multiple times too. Claude missed a lot of shots in the 2nd half, thankfully.

Does Baylor get any credit for Claude going 0-8 in the 2nd half? On his 7-23 night (7-15 in the first half), he scored twice over Kalk on switches and once over Miller for an And 1. Baylor's worst defensive possession was the foul on the 3 point attempt. He got too close going by him on the contest allowing Claude to extend his right leg out unnaturally and sell the call.

Yes, he does.