Xavier just about did enough to win a game they very much could not afford to lose. They don’t ask how, they just ask how many.
Imagine a world in which Georgetown is a good basketball team. Yikes. Anyway, they aren’t, so Xavier got away with one tonight. Joel said Xavier faceplanted across the line, but that would seem to imply that they had reach some height to begin with.
But, as the subtitle says, they don’t ask how. Xavier couldn’t afford to lose this game, and they didn’t. It was an odd contest. Dayvion McKnight didn’t score until the last minute, Bad Ryan Conwell showed up, Dante Maddox… well he was normal Dante Maddox, and even Connor Onion was frustrated with the officiating.
But the most important thing here was seeing a grown man fall in love. Sometimes that comes late in life for people, and today it happened for LaPhonso Ellis. I don’t know if it was love at first sight, but as soon as Mr. Ellis clapped eyes on Micah Peavy tonight, something special happened. It is approaching Valentine’s Day and underdressed cherubs with deadly weapons abounded as LaPhonso lauded the defense of Peavy (he allowed Dailyn Swain a career high 18 on 8-11 from the floor and got BODIED for the game-sealing bucket) and proclaimed him the best two way player in the conference, apparently forgetting Kam Jones, Eric Dixon, Ryan Kalkbrenner, Solo Ball, RJ Luis, and, well, a lot of other guys exist. Honestly though, that’s the thing about love: it will make you say some really silly stuff.
Dailyn Swain (18/6/4) was immense tonight. Someone told him about three weeks ago to stop lingering around looking vaguely menacing and go do something. Today he was a problem. The Swain of a month ago wouldn’t have made a throat slashing gesture after punching on Drew Fielder, but this version does. When his teammates got goofy, Swain had a single turnover and took nary a bad shot. The kid is on his way.
Marcus Foster (17/13/2) is at the other end of his career from Dailyn. He’s a rugged vet and at some point tonight he realized that the usual suspects weren’t going to get it done. No matter, then, he’d do the scoring himself this time. He still didn’t shoot much, just seven times, but he didn’t miss from deep and got the offensive rebound on one of his two missed attempts from inside the arc. Foster and Swain were the highlights, but they weren’t the only takeaways.
Ryan Conwell is incredibly streaky
2-7, 1-8, 2-7, 6-10, 0-8, 4-9, 0-2, 4-8, 1-7. That’s Ryan Conwell from behind the arc recently. There are no steady 3-7 or 2-5 performances in there, he’s either red hot or he’s very bad. At some point X is going to need him to level back out and become a reliable part of the offense. He scrabbled his way to 11 points tonight, but it took him 12 shots and five free throw attempts to do it.
John Hugley deserves some love
The statline (2/0/1) isn’t impressive, but Hugley was rock solid on defense and looked more steady on offense. He’ll be credited with two turnovers, but one came when he picked Ryan Conwell with a pretty pass on a back cut, only to discover to his chagrin that Conwell had inexplicably stopped cutting. Seven minutes isn’t a ton, but these were seven good minutes. X can use that from the big man.
Dante Maddox
I don’t even know what to say. With the game in the balance and without having attempted a shot, Maddox got off two vintage Dante Maddox shots. 2-2 from three, a line of 6/0/2 in 19 minutes. Job done.
Xavier didn’t play well
1.04 points per possession, 22.5% turnover rate, four offensive rebounds, and allowing an opponent to shoot 62.5% inside the arc are not generally the keys to a win, but they were enough tonight. Sometimes you have to win ugly. Had there been someone in charge in the Georgetown sideline he might have told them to force the ball inside rather than continuing to hoist threes on their way to 7-23 from deep. Ostensibly a coach would do that, but he was too busy scanning the crowd for someone to fight. Like adults do. I guess that’s better than looking for a date.
Xavier played well enough
Outside of Ryan Conwell, Xavier was 6-11 from deep. Zach Freemantle quietly (?) put up 17/3/2 and obliterated Micah Peavy on the final possession that mattered. Dayvion McKnight and Jerome Hunter were bad enough that I won’t list their stat lines out of respect, but they both showed up when absolutely needed. Playing like that at Villanova or Butler or at home against Creighton will get you beat. They can’t all be gems, though, and tonight X came back after six days off and handled business.