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A month ago Xavier fans were reeling after a home loss to St. John's. The team was 7-7 in conference with a brutal stretch coming up. Faced with a make or break run in to the Big East tournament, the Musketeers rose to the task and left us spending Selection Sunday wondering where the team will land, not if the NIT will come calling. In the Big East tournament Xavier tore off wins against Butler and Georgetown before falling to Villanova, one of the top teams in the nation. Here's where the top prognosticators think that has left the Musketeers.
ESPN- Joe Lunardi
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Joe Lunardi is probably the best known, if not the most accurate, of the bracketologists and his projection is fairly favorable to Xavier. Davidson does shoot the ball well from deep, but they get absolutely obliterated in the post on defense. A Xavier-Virginia matchup would figure to play out as a first team to 55 scenario. All things considered, the Musketeers could do a lot worse than this.
CBS- Jerry Palm
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Jerry Palm is generally more accurate than Lunardi, but that's not a good thing here. The Xavier-Dayton first round game would make for a more heightened level of tension that March usually serves up, but that's where the fun would end. Kentucky is beatable, but Xavier is not the team to do it. Landing in this particular 8/9 game would be the death knell of almost any team's season.
SB Nation- Chris Dobbertean
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Finally, it's SB Nation's own Chris Dobbertean. Chris told us yesterday that he saw Xavier as a six that could hang there if the loss to Villanova wasn't too damaging. Apparently, he didn't think it was. Wyoming lands at 102nd on the KenPom rankings and doesn't shoot the ball well enough to really trouble the Xavier defense. (At least in theory). Waiting in the second round would be a potential matchup with Maryland and their star, Dez Wells.
Those are the three projections that we have been tracking all March as they stand now. Come this evening, none of these will matter when the official bracket comes out. The theorizing and hypothesizing is almost over, it's finall Selection Sunday!