Shootaround

Confirmed Xavier fan Shin-Soo Choo

Were you watching every basket of the national championship on DVR? Do you have so much free time that you are watching grown men hit a motionless ball with a skinny stick? Maybe baseball season has dragged you away from your internet. Regardless, you don't have to worry, we've already seen the national championship game and don't watch golf, (we do love the Cleveland Indians though) so we've been basking in the pale glow of the computer all week. Here's all the news that's news.

Ugly Basketball?

Brad Stevens hadn't even inhaled to make his classy post-game statements last night before people all over the internet were calling UConn's victory over Butler the worst championship game in NCAA history. Setting aside the knee-jerk historical hyperbole (and the fact that "low-scoring" doesn't necessarily mean "bad"), I wanted to look into what factors went into making the game what it was.

Brad Stevens got the pace, but not the production

The first of these was the pace of the game. Butler, as pretty much every American media outlet may have mentioned before the game, was a team well-suited to playing an ugly, grinding style of basketball. Conventional wisdom was that a slower pace and a more physical game would benefit them. While it is true that Butler was 277th in the nation in adjusted tempo this season, it somehow escaped mention that UConn was 240th in the country - having played about a possession per game faster than Butler on the year. The Huskies were at the end of a grueling stretch of games (the national title game was their 11th in 27 days) and hadn't had their best player off the floor since the first round. Neither team was looking to turn this game into a track meet, especially not early.

How Good is Matt Howard?

Greatness, flopping

This article got me to thinking about Butler and Matt Howard. It should be stated right up front that I am not a Butler fan, nor do I particularly care for young Mr. Howard. All that said, I decided to head to kenpom and Statsheet and give him a fair shake. The premise of the aforementioned article was that it was hard to define what made Howard a "great" player. Teammates debated the merits of his offense, his defense, and his work rate. I've seen a lot of Butler recently, and nothing about Howard really jumped out at me, so it was time to crunch some numbers.

2011-2012 Look Ahead

The dust has settled on the 2010-2011 season, as Brad has so eloquently recapped. With the past now behind us - which the past technically always is - it's time for our annual glimpse well into the future as we preview next season. Post-season look-aheads are tricky because there is so much that can happen between now and November that can have a serious impact on how the year develops. As always, there are concerns for next year as well as reasons to hope. To keep you from getting too high or too low, I've had the courtesy to alternate them below.

Concern: A lack of proven big men.

Somebody get this guy a meal plan.

Jamel McLean (gone) led the team in rebounding this year, and Kenny Frease was second. After him was Tu Holloway (a guard), then Dante Jackson (gone), and Mark Lyons (a guard). Sixth on the team was Jeff Robinson, at 3.1 rebounds per game. While there's nothing wrong with guards that can rebound and a big man has more responsibilities that grabbing boards, this is just illustrative of Xavier's potential question marks up front. On top of that, Robinson, incoming freshman Jalen Reynolds, and newly-eligible transfer Travis Taylor combine to average 6'8", 214 lbs. That's a lot of skinny right there.

Gyan for Africa! (or, Why I'm Cheering for UConn)

Many of you know that there was a World Cup contested just last year. The tournament was played in South Africa, and a lot of the media types - especially on ESPN - were playing up that fact. For any game in which at least one African team was playing, the supposition that the entire continent was supporting the team in question. This peaked when Ghana's Asamoah Gyan had a penalty kick to win a knock-out game against Uruguay. As he ran up to shoot, the radio announcer - whose name has slipped my mind - yelled, "Gyan for Africa!" He missed, and they ended up losing.

We're not here to talk about soccer though. In this tournament, Butler and VCU are carrying the "mid-major" banner into the Final Four. What bothers me is that the assumption among the media at large that a win for either of those teams is a win for non-Big Six teams everywhere. I've gotta tell you, to me, it doesn't really prove anything for X if Butler or VCU wins the championship. It doesn't give me more hope as a fan that Xavier can do the same, and it certainly doesn't make it any more likely. If either of those teams wins, it really is a great story, but that story has nothing to do with Xavier or any other mid-major team.

Postseason Awards

Not this one, but you get the idea

It's the time of the year where the fans of all but four teams have been relegated to postseason awards and cheering vehemently against Kentucky. We've already written a recap of both how the season started and the masterful run that ended all too soon. Now comes the time to hand out some (imaginary) hardware. We'll go from the mundane to the whimsical in our attempt to to put one final cap on the 2010-2011 Xavier basketball season.

Season In Review: Part Two

This is a rejection and, possibly, a foul

We left off part one of the season recap with the team responding to the Crosstown Shootout mauling by playing some of their best ball of the year. With the early season injuries out of the way, the guard play coming together nicely, and Coach Mack doing a brilliant job with seven players, things were looking up.

In part two of the recap we'll cover the end of the season and later today we'll give out some (undoubtedly) coveted awards. More than that, we'll try to put a pretty little bow on a season that defies simple explanation.