Nothing to win, nothing to lose, still have to play.
South Dakota at home. Louisville at home. Chicago State at home.
That’s a comprehensive list of DePaul’s wins this year. Three really bad teams, all in the friendly confines of Wintrust Arena. I don’t even have to check to know they’re all Q4 games. Georgetown is an embarrassingly bad major conference team. DePaul is just embarrassingly bad on the whole. The whole of the Big East has survived DePaul Roulette in 16 tries so far; Xavier’s last turn is now up.
And that’s pretty much all the Muskies are playing for. There isn’t a way back into the bubble conversation for Xavier, and the auto bid doesn’t care what your resume looks like. As a team, this is a game whose leverage is encompassed entirely in shame of losing to the worst high-major team in living memory [citation needed].
What is at stake for the individual players on Xavier is significantly more interesting. Sean Miller has for the past couple of weeks circled the idea that some of the fringe members of the roster had the chance to play themselves onto – or off of – the next Xavier Sweet 16 team with their effort and production down the stretch. This week, he just openly said it. I have no idea who is on the precipice. I don’t know what to expect in terms of roster deployment from here on out.
I do know that you won’t find a regular season conference game in which experimentation is more possible than this one. I expect to see some weird fives on the floor tonight.
Team fingerprint
The offense is bad. They turn the ball over like it has been covered in hot lard, can’t score at any of the three levels, and they fritter away their excellent free throw rate by being eighth in the league in free throw percentage. All those missed shots are basically guaranteed one and dones, as they’re last in the league in OReb%. Overall, they have the worst offense in the league and it’s not even close.
Defensively, they’re last or next to last in EFG%, TO rate, DReb%, 3P%, 2P%, FT%, and three-point rate. Oh, and block rate. They things they aren’t miserable at are still bad. There’s not a meaningful statistical category on defense in which they’re even in the middle of the Big East. Overall, they have the worst defense in the league, and it’s only close because Georgetown is also booty.
Players
Starters
| Starting matchups | ||
|---|---|---|
| Jalen Terry | Point Guard | Dayvion McKnight |
| Senior | Class | Senior |
| 6’0″, 160 | Measurements | 6’0″, 188 |
| 8.1/3.6/2.3 | Game line | 12/3.8/5 |
| 41/46.9/83.3 | Shooting line | 45.8/36.8/81.1 |
| More than half of his shots are from three, more than half of those attempts come from off the bounce, and – in conference play – half of them go in. He can snipe, but he doesn’t lift much. He is an okay distributor, but he has serious ball security issues. He’ll pick up some steals, and he rebounds well for a man his size. His offensive game is limited to mostly threes; he doesn’t shoot well at all inside the arc. | ||
| Chico Carter, Jr. | Shooting Guard | Quincy Olivari |
| Senior | Class | Senior |
| 6’2″, 198 | Measurements | 6’3″, 200 |
| 11.2/2.8/3.6 | Game line | 18.9/5.3/1.9 |
| 40.3/32.9/75.6 | Shooting line | 43.3/42.8/82.8 |
| Carter shoots over 40% from behind the arc on his career, but he has taken a step back this season. Injuries have blunted both his effectiveness and his availability. He’s probably better on the ball than Terry is, and he’s not afraid to call his own number. They’re both more combo guards than a true 1 and 2, but that’s not how this spreadsheet is set up. Carter doesn’t board much at all and isn’t a great defender; he was out for the first game between these two teams. | ||
| Jaden Henley | Small Forward | Desmond Claude |
| Sophomore | Class | Sophomore |
| 6’7″, 201 | Measurements | 6’6″, 203 |
| 8.6/2.7/1.5 | Game line | 15.5/4.3/3.4 |
| 43.2/27.3/75 | Shooting line | 40.4/21.3/78.7 |
| After going over a dozen points just once in the first 21 games of the season, Henley has gone over 15 in 5 of the last 6, including 17 against Xavier. He’s 25-41 and inside the arc 27-33 from the line in February. He has been a mediocre three-point shooter this year and he drives to score rather than pull up as a general rule. He rebounds like a point guard. | ||
| Elijah Fisher | Power Forward | Dailyn Swain |
| Sophomore | Class | Freshman |
| 6’6″, 220 | Measurements | 6’7″, 200 |
| 10.2/3.7/1.6 | Game line | 4.5/3/1.3 |
| 51.9/26.5/72.2 | Shooting line | 44.2/16/81.3 |
| If Swain starts here, he’ll be the only member of Xavier’s starting lineup that is outrebounded on a per game basis by any member of DePaul’s team. This is a remarkably bad rebounding team, almost like it’s a strategic choice to just… not. Anyway, Fisher is the closest thing the Blue Demons have to an effective offensive player, so of course he’s eighth on the team in shots percentage. He’s good at the rim and in the mid-range, but he’s not much of a threat from deep. | ||
| Da’Sean Nelson | Center | Abou Ousmane |
| Senior | Class | Senior |
| 6’8″, 220 | Measurements | 6’10”, 240 |
| 10.3/3.8/2 | Game line | 7.2/6.6/1.2 |
| 47.2/33.3/69.7 | Shooting line | 47.7/25/44.6 |
| Nelson leads the team in points and rebounds and is second in assists. He gets there by sheer brute force, just hucking shots like there’s no tomorrow. In addition to being a volume scorer, he has some decent distribution numbers and solid ball security. He also draws and commits about 5 fouls per 40 minutes, which is good and then bad, respectively. |
Reserves
A third of their minutes come off the bench, which is above average in the nation. That is less a commentary on the strength of their bench than it is the weaknesses of their starters. In a sense, everyone on the team is a reserve waiting for a real starting five to arrive.
Jeremiah Oden is a 6’9” big man who plays like a guard. He averages 7.9/3.6/0.7 on 33.6/30.4/81.4 shooting. He leads the team in FGA despite shooting under 50% at the rim, just 16.7% in the mid-range, and 30% from deep. He also blocks shots at about the same rate as Chico Carter, who is 7 inches shorter. Mac Etienne is a 6’10” big man who is the exact opposite. He doesn’t get much run, but he blocks shots well and eats on the glass. He averages just 1.8/2.4/0.5 because he limits his minutes via fouling 8 times per 40.
KT Raimey is the only healthy reserve guard. He averages 7.4/2.3/1.2 on 36/36.6/89.2 shooting. More than two-thirds of his shots are from deep, and he’s also a solid defender on the perimeter. He’s an interesting piece who I think could have been a solid role player on a good team instead of just kind of there on a bad one.
Freshman big man Churchill Abass averages 3.2/3.1/0.2 off the bench despite a shockingly low 12.2 shots percentage and a similarly diminutive usage rate. He’s a good rebounder who isn’t catastrophic in his foul rate, but he’s got a scoring range about the size of the charge circle and makes fewer than half his free throws.
Three questions
-Can Xavier dodge DePaul Roulette? I said above that this is what’s at stake, and I stand by it. This is the only meaningful thing that’s going to come out of this contest, for good or ill, at a team level. In Chicago, Quincy Olivari had the game of his life to bury the Blue Demons under an avalanche of made buckets. If he doesn’t repeat that performance, someone needs to step up to keep this from being nervy.
-Who was Sean Miller referencing? If you haven’t heard already, Sean Miller was incandescent with rage in his radio show this week, and he said that the effort level at Marquette was unacceptable and some guys have shown they don’t deserve to play going forward. That’s fairly direct talk for a coach speaking to the media. I suspect we’ll know in 40 minutes of game time who should be googling how to put their names in the portal over the summer.
-Who cares? This game is as low-leverage as one can be. The motivation of the players is going to have to come from internal factors, because the externalities are fairly mundane. Sean Miller is trying to light a fire under this crew; we’ll see whose butt is flammable, or whatever the logical extrapolation of that analogy would be.
Three keys
-Figure out a viable big man. Abou Ousmane is a good rebounder, especially on the offensive end, but he defends by fouling, makes 45% of his free throws, and shoots under 50% inside the arc despite being 6’10” and built like a brick outhouse. Is a Euro going to surprise (stun?) us? Can Dailyn Swain and Kachi Nzeh hold down the 4 and 5? Can we persuade the opponents to play 3 on 3 for the rest of the year? Something has to happen; might as well start here.
-Rest some guards. How? Partly see above. Partly give me more Trey Green and some extended Brad Colbert run. Dayvion, Quincy, and Des have been carrying this team for three months. Regardless of what you think of how that has gone, we’re going to need those three guys to carry this team to four wins in four games. That’s a task for fresh legs; maybe let these guys take a breath.
-Win and move on. Xavier won by 25 in Chicago. They’re favored by 21 in this one on the KenPom. Even the darkest night will see a dawn, unless at any point during that night you lose to DePaul at home. This game shouldn’t be a contest; if it is one, a lot more than just one game is going wrong.