Well, it all comes down to this. Xavier can’t change the resume, so now we wait
It all comes down to this. A season that tipped off before the leaves were off the trees hangs in the balance. Xavier’s fate will be decided by 12 basketball adjacent people in a room. The field is essentially filled already, just the last couple decisions remain.
There is every chance Xavier doesn’t make it this year. Their resume is about as borderline as you can get. A single Q1 win, 9-11 in the top two quads, and nothing really marquee to hang a hat on.
If X doesn’t make it they’ll have no one to blame but themselves and Brian O’Connell. Xavier has blown second half leads of six (TCU), five (UConn), 16 (SJU), 16 (Nova), and 14 (Marquette). They’ve done it by playing terrible offense (Michigan), and terrible defense (take your pick). They also lost because a ref missed a slide tackle and because Brian O’Connell is missing a raft of brain cells. You simply can’t throw away as many games as Xavier did and then complain much when the committee leaves you out.
By the same token, Xavier should be in. X has beaten the two time defending champion, obliterated the second best team in the Big East, beaten Marquette on the road, beaten Villanova, and trounced Wake Forest. They lost three games without their best player, then went 12-4 after he returned.
More importantly, Xavier has nary a bad loss. Sure, they have lost games they had won, but they are yet to have lost a game they _should have_ won. That’s important. While UNC (Stanford), Boise State (Boston College), and New Mexico (San Jose State) are all weighed down by lower quad losses, Xavier is not. It wasn’t always pretty, but Xavier always beat the bad teams they played.
I don’t know which way it’s going to go tonight. I know it will be close. I don’t want to have to pretend to care about the NIT or whatever the Crown is. We’ve had enough of that for a lifetime. This team is red hot right now. One positive decision tonight could spark the kind of run that people talked about for decades to come.
10 hours to go. It’s going to seem like a lifetime.