With the Georgetown game postponed, will Xavier ever play again?

It is starting to feel just as likely that the QAnon conspiracy is true that Xavier will ever play a basketball game again. The ramblings of that coalition of the deranged on the internet have been forever (hopefully) quelled, but so has most of Xavier’s January schedule. The Musketeers will not play against Georgetown on the 26th because of Covid issues in the Hoyas program. It has already been ten day since Xavier played, it could very easily be at least nine more.

The next scheduled game for X is against Butler on the 29th. By that point it will have been 19 days since Colby Jones beat Providence and then pointed to the sky for his grandfather. Xavier will have won eight in a row, suffered a two game blip, and then won two in a row to right the ship. They will have no momentum from that, no game speed built up, no comfortable rotation they’ve settled in, nothing. 19 days in the middle of a college basketball season is essentially a reset. It’s a complete loss of the work that has come before. Practice can still be held (once people are clear), but nothing compares to games.

To that end, the Big East has to do something. Villanova has games to make up, as does just about everyone else. If Xavier tests clean this weekend, they need to have a Tuesday or Wednesday game with a team that has an open date. The only team that meets that requirement without some serious schedule juggling is the Wildcats. They could play Xavier on Tuesday with two full days off before the game and three after it. For this season to make any real progress, that hard call must be made.