Xavier v. Wright State: Boxscore Breakdown

What happened: Xavier 90 - Wright State 55

Let's start with great scorers who set career highs tonight. Trevon Bluiett went for 22/11/2 on a tidy 7-12/5-8/3-3 shooting. He scored off catch and shoot, off stickbacks, off of drives, and occasionally from just walking into his own shot. He was active on the glass at both ends, was in the right spots on offense... I mean, what are you going to say about a guy who looked like he was just scoring whenever he wanted to? The best number for him may be 24 minutes played, which represents some well-earned rest for the only Muskie averaging more than 30 minutes a game.

Coach Mack needed just 20 minutes out of Myles to get 13/5/2 on 3-6/2-4/5-5 shooting. Myles has hit 9-18 from deep since his slow start, and he added another three points courtesy of getting fouled in the act of shooting from deep. Myles is looking increasingly like Xavier's backup point guard in tight games (he had 0 turnovers again tonight); having him rolling in all regards going into the Shootout is a huge boost.

Speaking of point guards, Edmond Sumner had just 3/2/3 on 1-6/0-1/1-1 shooting. Sumner drove into traffic a little too freely tonight, but he frankly wasn't getting a lot of love from the officials. He only had 1 turnover, but some of the shots he forced were only slightly better than a travel. If the game is being adjudicated loosely on Saturday, Sumner needs to make the adjustment before he drives into another ugly shooting game.

Jalen didn't get hurt today. He started slowly and was 2-8 from the floor at one point, but he finished with a leisurely 10/4/0 with 2 blocks in just 15 minutes. Coach Mack ran a couple of plays for him early in the second half to get him buckets and ostensibly confidence, then got him on the bench and relaxing. I approve of this coaching move.

Xavier only had four guys in double figures tonight - having Trevon hog so many points will do that to you. JP had 12/4/3 with 2 steals on 4-8/2-4/2-2 shooting, and one of his misses came from approximately 2/3rds of a mile as the shot clock wound down. JP was getting buckets and making friends again tonight, which is the form we want to see him in heading into the weekend.

There were a lot of guys from the end of the bench getting some time tonight, and results were mixed. On the good end, Sean O'Mara had 7/2/2 in 13 minutes and Makinde London played some stout defense and flashed plenty of offensive confidence in back-dribbling to the corner to bury a three. Kaiser Gates got 6 boards, which is good, but looked poor on offense in going 0-3 from the floor. Tim Stainbrook got a four-minute trillion; get some shots up, young man!

That's that done. In case you haven't heard, Cincinnati is coming to Cintas on Saturday.

Odds and ends:

• Xavier had 20 assists on 26 made baskets, a 76.9% assist rate.
• Xavier killed Wright State on the glass, going for a 41.8% OReb% and 85.7% DReb%, and that against a team allowing a 20.7% OReb% coming into the game.
• Xavier was 28-34 from the line.