Talking Xavier’s chances and other matchups worth catching

If you aren’t talking basketball 24/7 right now, this may not be the site for you. We usually conversate on Sunday (actually, we’re brothers, so we conversate every day), but we couldn’t resist the urge to keep it rolling today.

Brad: Ok, that...unusual new Selection Show is done and we still don’t know who we have. What was your immediate reaction to our draw? I was loving it until I saw other teams. At this time each year I get to the point where our second round opponents could be the winner of St. X and Elyria Catholic and I’d be worried.

That said, Missouri scares me. They are under seeded because of injuries and they just added a lottery pick. Florida St will be playing for revenge, so they also concern me. That’s assuming we get past the #16 seed, which I don’t want to take for granted. I both love and hate being so nervous.

Joel: As soon as people started tweeting about hating the Selection Show, I knew you’d love it. Nothing makes you happier than being contrary. I didn’t get to watch it due to work stuff, but my position is that (a) it doesn’t need to be two hours long, (b) we don’t need NBA analysts involved at all, and (c) it’s a misstep to release the teams involved before putting them in the bracket. It’s like the people in charge of it forgot what it was like to be fans.

Brad: Whoa, first off I didn’t love the Selection Show. Last year was perfect, why change it? I just didn’t hate it as much as I thought I would. The alphabetical list did build some suspense if you knew what you were looking for but, of course, more than half the people there have no idea what is going on. It was bad, but it wasn’t so bad I walked into traffic. Better?

Joel: Missouri profiles way too much like Nova for my comfort. Only three teams in the nation are in the top 30 in both 3PA and 3P%: Nova, Davidson, and Missouri. Nova shoots 39.8% from deep and takes 46.6% of their shots from there. Missouri shoots 39.2% and takes 45.5% of their shots from beyond the arc. Do you guys remember how we did against Nova? I don’t recall if being pleasant.

Brad: Missouri really scares me. I’m not looking forward to them yet though, because there is a game to win before that. I also hate it when people say they’d rather have team x play us than team y. It seems like wishing for Florida St is tempting fate. I hate this. Can’t we just have a bye or something?

Brad: Outside of Xavier, what other matchups do you look forward to seeing? I would love to see Virginia meet Creighton in the second round. If there’s a team that can get hit and obliterate a packline defense (other than Nova), it’s the Bluejays. Virginia is basically going to dare a team to beat them by making contested threes and Creighton is just going to keep chucking them.

Bryan: I think Wichita State-Marshall is going to be interesting. WSU has been bad at defense and, as we know, Marshall loves to run and gun. If they get hot, they could run the Shockers off the floor.