Xavier 89 -75 Butler: Xavier dominates wire to wire.

Three weeks into the Big East season, the standings paint a picture of a conference without a middle pack. UConn, St. John’s, Villanova, Creighton, and Seton Hall have all placed themselves at the front of the standings and are multiple games over .500 with NCAA Tournament seeding (UConn, SJU, probably Nova) or trying to make sure they get on the right side of the bubble for an at large bid (Seton Hall on the right side, Creighton on the wrong side). Then you have your bottom dwellers: Providence, Marquette, Georgetown, and Butler all have a single conference win to their names and are currently in a scrap to see which one of them gets to wear the home uniforms on Wednesday night at the Big East tournament. DePaul and Xavier are the only teams somewhere in the middle. Neither has a realistic path to an at large bid, but they have both tallied multiple Big East wins. Last night was a chance for Xavier to move further into the no man’s land that is the middle of the Big East conference standings and they made a show of seizing it with both hands.

With Butler having 8 days of rest and preparation prior to this game, one might have figured that they would be the ones who came out of the gates firing, but it was the Musketeers who took the early momentum thanks to 6 early points from Tre Carroll (29/9/0, 5 blocks), who seems to have his best games against teams Xavier’s fanbase despises. Xavier had their way for most of the first half until an 8-0 spurt by Butler cut the lead to 3 and gave the Bulldogs a chance to tie the game with 5 minutes before the break. A steal by Roddie Anderson III (11/7/4) led to an empty possession, but a block by Carroll led to a Malik Messina-Moore (15/5/9) three, which sparked a 10-0 Xavier run to restore the lead to 13. The Bulldogs would battle back to cut the deficit to 8 heading into the locker room and had it down to 5 before the first media timeout of the second half, but Xavier’s relentless pace and Butler’s inability to stop Tre Carroll led to Xavier outscoring them 27-9 over the span of 8 second half minutes to stretch the lead to 23 and effectively end the game. Xavier eased the foot of the pedal a bit down the stretch, at times to the chagrin of Coach Pitino, but 18 points on 7-11 from the floor in the second half from Carroll was more than enough to send Thad Matta and his charges back to Indy to contemplate the wreckage of a once promising season.

Three Takeaways

Speed equals success– For as uncompetitive as the game ended up being, it is notable that Xavier only outscored Butler by 1 point in the halfcourt. The 29-16 advantage Xavier had in fastbreak points was the story of the game and, although Butler came in having played a slightly higher tempo on the season than Xavier had, it became clear quite early that they were not suited to run with the Musketeers. Roddie is always up for a track meet, but it was critical that MMM had 9 assists to 2 turnovers and Xavier’s ratio as a team was 30:9. It wasn’t a particularly good shooting night from deep, but being able to run that much without giving the ball away can paper over a lot of cracks.

Milicevic is finding his feet– After a slow start shooting wise in conference play, Jovan Milicevic has been trending in the right direction in the last two games. After a dominant 22 and 8 against Providence, he had an efficient 14/2/4 with his customary 5 fouls. Having a player a 6’10” who can step out and hit 40+% from three and hold his own on the glass is a huge boon and this past week has shown why he is a player worthy of Xavier building a team around.

A Robinson resurgence?– To say the season has been up and down for Anthony Robinson would be putting it lightly. After starting the first three games of the season, he has fallen so far down the pecking order that he was a healthy scratch in two of Xavier’s last three games going in to last night. With Pape N’Diaye in foul trouble, Robinson got the call to provide 8 minutes off the bench last night and turned in the best +/- on the team in that span, tallying 3 rebounds a block and an assist in that span. There is clearly an immense amount of physical talent there, so last night should give some hope that he can turn a corner and give Xavier the physical presence in the paint that he was brought in to provide.