It hurts to care this much.
A peak behind the curtain here. I’m a guy with four decades in my rearview, I have Pat Kelsey levels of domestic happiness, I don’t wear sweatpants to work, but I have a good job, and I get to coach high school soccer. My life is objectively good. All my brothers who write here could write their version of the same thing.
None of that changes that I am sad in real life right now. Sports hold a special part in all of our lives. There is something about it that just pulls at us emotionally. I’ll fully admit that as this game wound down today, I found an empty parking area and sat, alternately fist pumping, then sliding down in my seat, then punching the air, then staring into the middle distance. My wife, kids, and one brother were on Peacock, so I just had to listen to Byron and Joe weave their tapestry.
And what a game this was. Xavier was… well, you saw it. Ryan Conwell was incandescent. I have no idea if he’ll be back next season or not, but he was incredible in a game that Xavier absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, had to have. Xavier didn’t get it, but it wasn’t Conwell’s fault. A month ago some moron told us on Twitter that Conwell wasn’t Big East level. Today he was the best player in the Big East. Not only did he get 38, he did it with peerless efficiency. It should have been an effort that ended with him screaming happily into the night after his last three pointer.
It wasn’t though. And, contrary to what you’ve heard, it wasn’t because of turnovers. Xavier turned the ball over 10 times. Their turnover rate was 13.9%. That’s elite. Extrapolate that to a season and it’s top 15 in the nation. Five times this year Marquette couldn’t force a 15% turnover rate. The other four times their opponent won. Turnovers didn’t do Xavier in by their volume today, but with their timing.
Dailyn Swain has been brilliant during Xavier’s run back to relevance. He was not today. In fact, he was quite bad. For one fleeting afternoon he turned back into the guy who couldn’t quite decide what to do. There had been hints recently, against Seton Hall and Creighton he hadn’t been great, but today he was terrible. Somehow, he made three incredibly critical turnovers. With X leading 62-58 and having finally gotten a vital stop, he got picked clean dribbling inexplicably at half court. Stevie Mitchell cut it to two and with 5:48 to play, Dailyn turned it over. Marquette jarred a three and then, almost incomprehensibly, Dailyn turned it over again.
In that 48 second span two Swain turnovers turned a two point lead to a three point deficit. And, of course, you feel for the poor kid. Again though, it wasn’t so much the fact a turnover happened as the timing and circumstance of it that hurt X today. What did the actual damage was a defense that just could not get a stop. There is no kind way to say it, The Golden Eagles destroyed Xavier’s defense in the second half. They scored 53 points. Only once in the second half did Xavier string together consecutive stops.
There’s not much reason in continuing to stand over the corpse pondering why life-saving efforts didn’t work. All that matters is that Xavier is, likely, dead. UNC, Texas, and Boise all got huge wins. Xavier got dealt a team playing .500 basketball over the last two months and lost. If somehow they sneak into the play-in games in Dayton it will be because of the largesse of the committee, not because they finished the job when they needed to.
More likely there will be some stupid tournament for also-rans. If Zach Freemantle or Jerome Hunter want to play more ball, God bless them. I don’t want to watch my favorite team play in a tournament I can’t really be bothered to care about again. Had Zach Freemantle just laid the ball in or Dante Maddox and Marcus Foster gone better than 2-8 from deep, this would be a moot point. They didn’t though. Ryan Conwell pushed the rock uphill almost alone.
Sports are amazing when they go well. When Jhonkensey Noel and David Fry went back to back against the Yankees, I fully admit to jumping up and down and hugging another grown man. When Tu Holloway floated above Jack Conley or Malcom Bernard sprinted gleefully, arms and legs pumping like they weren’t quite connected to his body, I was elated. There is a counterpoint to all happiness in life, though. Today, for sports, that was Xavier.
The Musketeers were so, so close to sealing their bid. Instead, they probably just sealed their fate.