Dickie Simpkins sucks. He’s probably the worst announcer currently working the game. Bill Walton in his current state would be better. His bread and butter is being bad. This isn’t germane to the game, but someone needed to mention it. This game turned on a horrid call. Isaiah Walker, rocking his Ice Spice hair, challenged […]
Dickie Simpkins sucks. He’s probably the worst announcer currently working the game. Bill Walton in his current state would be better. His bread and butter is being bad. This isn’t germane to the game, but someone needed to mention it.
This game turned on a horrid call. Isaiah Walker, rocking his Ice Spice hair, challenged a shot. He didn’t make contact with the shooter, he left the shooter room to land. Despite that, the ref who was on the baseline (and this happened top of the key), called a foul after Xavier had secured the rebound and run out. The call was so incredibly late that the announcer was momentarily confused as to what had happened. DePaul made all three free throws and Xavier never led again.
But it would be really, really disingenuous to claim the officials or Dickie Simpkins cost Xavier this game. (Though Dickie did cost me a bit of my will to live.) Xavier lost this game because they took a really, really bad offense, and offense we barely mentioned in the preview because it was so bad, and made it look like 2018 Villanova. DePaul’s offense was 187th in the nation coming in. They had an offensive efficiency of 90 in Big East play. That is beyond bad, it’s full on pitiful. Delaware St. has the nation’s worst efficiency at 89.5. 364 teams in the nation play offense better than the Blue Demons had in their last three games.
Xavier let them score 1.25 points per possession this game and over 1.3 points per possession in the second half. How is honestly hard to fathom. CJ Gunn scored 22. He generally operates at an efficiency that makes Jordan Crawford seem like Mark Price. No DePaul player had an offensive efficiency below Gunn’s 102. His next lowest teammate posted a 114. The Blue Demons went from being the 364th worst offense in the nation to playing so well that their efficiency for this game would be 12th in the nation if it were extended for the year. That’s as complete as a turnaround can be.
But oh, dear reader, it wasn’t because DePaul was good. It was because Xavier’s offense was laughably bad. If you were to count how many open looks the Blue Demons got, you would certainly be scrawling on your walls like a lunatic by the end of this game. Xavier didn’t turn them over, rebound their misses, or speed them up. Chris Holtmann could not have dreamed that whatever he planned would work this well. His subconscious would surely have jarred him awake had he begun a dream that came even close to that.
Xavier didn’t help themselves, either. They didn’t turn the ball over much, but they did both times they had the ball with a chance to lead late. One of those was Jovan Milicevic dribbling the ball off his leg. The fact that Milicevic had 5/3/2 is actually impressive because he played only ten minutes because he simply could not keep his hands to himself all game. The call against Walker that flipped the game was bad, none of the ones against Milicevic were. He just kept running into and slapping people.
Roddie Anderson played his butt off as always and went for 15/2/2. Filip Borovicanin went for 10/10/3 and didn’t turn the ball over at all. The resurgence of Malik Messina-Moore continued as he had 14/1/3 on 5-12 shooting. Tre Carroll’s 17 came on 16 shots, but he was rebounding well. You’d think all of that would add up to a game in which Xavier played well, but it didn’t. All Wright might merit a missing person report at this point, but Isaiah Walker and Pape N’Diaye helped pick up his slack. The offense was actually pretty good.
But that defense was terrible. Some idiot on Twitter this week called for Coach Pitino to be removed and Travis Steele to be re-hired, as if Steele wants anything to do with most of this fanbase any more. That’s obviously dumb on its face, but Pitino did come with the reputation of a defensive coach. Xavier is 108th in the nation in defensive efficiency and doesn’t turn teams over. They’re below 230th in both shooting metrics. This team is not very good on offense and almost as bad on defense.
Dickie Simpkins and that one call were bad, Xavier’s defense was worse. If you’re going to mullered by DePaul, it’s hard to see where things get better. The Musketeers go to Marquette on Wednesday. The loser will be the worst team in the Big East.
Category: General Sports
