It's not easy to win twenty games, which is why Xavier is the first team to do it. For whatever reason, St. John's has been a tough matchup for Xavier, and that continued today. Xavier managed to get over the hump late, but this was a win that the Muskies would just as soon forget as quickly as possible.
Xavier's depth is a borderline miracle
Trevon Bluiett really struggled to find his range, Jalen Reynolds could barely get any minutes after getting 2 fouls in the first 40 seconds, and James Farr wasn't moving very well at times after leaving the DePaul game with a tweaked hammy. Fortunately Myles Davis was on hand to distribute, Trevon Bluiett dominated the glass, and JP Macura did his thing. Even when Xavier doesn't play well, they are able to get enough guys doing enough things to get the job done. By the time the final horn sounded, Xavier had put 10 guys in the scoring column.
There are no freebies in the Big East
The Red Storm is the worst team in the league by any measure, and twice they have taken Xavier down to the last minute of the game. This came right on the heels of Providence dropping the nightcap yesterday to DePaul. Xavier and Villanova have managed to establish a little bit of distance between themselves and the pack, but on any given night just about any team in the league is capable of grabbing a shock result.
St. John's is just weird
This matchup is just troubling for Xavier for some reason. X turned the ball over a ton and left a lot of points at the free throw line. The officials didn't seem to have a really good idea of how they wanted to call the game. The tempo was fast, then slow. In the meantime, Chris Mullin just kept taking up a perch on the scorer's table, content to watch the world go by as he enjoyed the zen of being able to swing your feet without having them touch the ground.