:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/53308917/usa_today_9886208.0.jpg)
How badly can a game start? It was like Xavier was doing an experiment to answer that question today. With the score sitting at 2-2, there was a blown call to give RaShid Gaston a foul on a moving screen. He said something and got a tech. Action came to the other end, where Coach Mack said something and got a tech. Then Marquette got hot. When the dust settled, Xavier was down 21-2 less than 6 minutes into the game.
The second half got even more bizarre. Xavier never closed it to single digits, and Marquette eventually hit enough threes to walk away from the Muskies. There were also more technical fouls, running the game’s total to 6 to go with more than one regular foul per minute. RaShid Gaston got his second tech of the game for being involved in... something. Obviously, I’m not that emotionally engaged in this write-up. Whatever; it was a boat race.
Xavier’s perimeter is broken
This makes sense without that much inspection, but it still needs to be handled. JP is well into proving that he can’t be the team’s lone attacking threat on the outside. Q isn’t a scorer, though he is doing quite well at distributing. The Shid needs fed; there’s no point in having JP and Goodin fire off combined 5-20s while Xavier can be getting buckets closer to the tin.
There’s not much left to do
Coach Mack has shuffled the deck as much as possible, but he’s running out of cards. Malcolm Bernard needed helped off the court today, though he did come back later, but Tim Stainbrook got 9 minutes today. Coach Mack is working with a thin rotation; some of that is a little bit on him with the Austin and London transfers, but mostly he’s a victim of some bad injury luck. If you know the strings he should be pulling, go ahead and @ him on Twitter.
The ref show has to stop
Seriously. I have no idea why either double technical was necessary. The official who teched Shid and Coach Mack early did so on the heels of his own blown call, and it wasn’t clear exactly what either of them did to get stuck other than bump their respective gums a bit. If your skin is that thin, maybe get out of reffing.