How did we get here?

Xavier will enter tomorrow’s game against Seton Hall with one guard on the roster, one big playing good basketball, and an assemblage of forwards filling in at the two, three, and four spots. That wasn’t Coach Mack’s plan coming off a season when Xavier hit their all time highest peak in the AP poll and was a dark horse contender for the Final Four. Now, 10 months after Bronson Koenig ruined everything, Xavier is scrambling to put things back together and stay competitive in the Big East. While the effects are just being felt now, the groundwork of the breakdown was laid back in the summer.

March 31st, 2016

JP Macura makes his first appearance in court after his hindquarters make their first appearance in a public setting. JP ended up pleading guilty and facing no consequences of any significant sort, but this was the first step into an offseason that was a complete mess.

April 12th, 2016

Makinde London transfers, eventually landing at Chattanooga. London is currently 88th in the nation in defensive rebounding rate and is tossing up a 4% block rate and 2.8% steal rate. Presumably, he also still plays the piano.

April 14th, 2016

Backup point guard Larry Austin Jr. elects to transfer out. LAJ landed at Vanderbilt, where he won’t play until next year. In conference play last year, LAJ had an efficiency rate of 98, an assist rate of 21.8%, and steal rate of 3.4%.

July 20th, 2016

News breaks that Myles Davis is the subject of a TPO from an ex-girlfriend. Stemming from the incident were charges of criminal damaging as well as an ugly story about walls punched, phones thrown, and cars kicked.

Aug 4th, 2016

A brief respite in the bad news. Xavier holds their World Series at Hayden Field. Myles Davis is in attendance, Kaiser Gates looks good, and Xavier Nation gets to meet Rashid Gaston and Malcolm Bernard. Trevon demonstrates why he doesn’t play for the baseball team in his free time.

Aug 18th, 2016

Eddie Ekiyor came to Xavier with some issues and left without ever having played a game. Ekiyor was a jumping four in the mold of Travis Taylor who was still learning the game. Most importantly, especially now, he was reported to be a ferocious rebounder. Before coming to Xavier Ekiyor had plead guilty to running over a police officer in a hit and run in Canada. That could be why he left, it could have played no role at all. Either way, he was gone before ever pulling on the uniform.

Aug 19th, 2016

Yes, that’s the very next day. More charges surface in the Myles Davis case. It still stems from the same incident, but it’s yet another blow to Davis and the program.

Sept 1st, 2016

This had been coming, but the news breaks on the first day of September that Myles Davis is suspended indefinitely. According to Coach Mack “Myles Davis is suspended indefinitely from all basketball activities. Playing basketball for Xavier is a privilege and we have high expectations for how our student-athletes represent our university. Unless Myles meets those expectations he will not be a part of our program.”

Oct 21st, 2016

Finally, bad news of the normal sort. Kaiser Gates, expected to take on a mucb larger role in 2016-17, undergoes a minor knee procedure. When he fully recovers both mentally and physically from it, we’ll let you know.

Jan 20th, 2017

There was basketball related bad news in the intervening period, but the hammer blow landed in late January. after three mostly ineffective games, Myles Davis left the team. What exactly happened will probably long be the center of debate amongst Xavier fans. What was certain is that the team’s emotional leader from the previous year was gone in utterly bizarre circumstances.

Jan 30th, 2017

Just ten days after Myles Davis left the Musketeers thin at guard, Edmond Sumner tore his ACL. That brings us back up to current in Xavier’s nightmarish season so far. Ignoring even what has happened on the floor in terms of games, the span since Koenig’s shot has been shambolic for the Musketeers. As we get ready to flip the calendar to February, the only hope is that the next two months won’t track like the previous 10.