Before the game started I got to see the finish of the Shriners Children’s Charleston Classic Championship Game (kinda wordy huh?) and Clemson walked out victorious. So, regardless of how we do this game, we lost to the champs so the sting of that loss hurts a little less.
That game went to overtime, so we were almost an hour late from the original tipoff. I was interested to see if that impacted our guys but it didn’t appear that way, at least at first. Brenen Lorient started us off pretty strong and the entire team’s defense was up to par. We forced 4 turnovers in the first 5 minutes of the game and Xaiver looked as uncomfortable as any team that we’ve played so far early on.
It seems as if the rest of the country got the memo on who Honor Huff is because Xavier played SMOTHERING defense on in through the first half. They were doing EVERYTHING to make sure he never caught the ball. Blitzes, hedges, ices, everything you can think of, that Xavier defense did. Huff only ever got 3looks at the rim in the first half and they weren’t even good looks.
The story of the first half of Xavier was their 3 point shooting. With 5 minutes left in the first half, they had made 8 field goals and 7 of them were from 3, 4 of them coming from one of their seniors Tre Carroll. For the half they hit 8 threes and shot 62% from deep. What are we supposed to do about that?
The story in the first half for us was how cold we went. We started the game off pretty well but to end the half we went 6/24 from the field while Xavier lit us up from deep. We also didn’t make them turn the ball over a lot. Our defense is predicated on forcing turnovers and converting them into points, and we never did that. At the horn Xavier leads 36–28 and we have a lot of work to do if we want to win this game.
I wish that I could say that we started the second half with a heater and snuffed out their offense, but I can’t. Unfortunately, I can pinpoint the exact moment where I lost hope in us winning this game. After 29.3 seconds of the best defense we’ve played all year, Jovan Milicevic made a side step, pump fake, buzzer beating three to extend their lead 47–41. That seems like a manageable deficit, sure, but that was the most deflating shot they hit all night.
We tried, don’t get me wrong. It was just too little too late. If it wasn’t them hitting a three, it was them scoring on a backdoor cut because we were so concerned about their outside shooting. If it wasn’t us turning the ball over, it was us clanking it off the side of the rim. We also had a pretty unfavorable whistle. That wasn’t the reason we lost this game, but it certainly didn’t help.
The last 14 minutes of the game after Milicevic hit that shot were really just a formality. We gave it a go, we’d hit a few shots, then they’d go on a run to put us back at arms length. As if the whole experience wasn’t bad enough Xavier banked one in from deep with 3:20 left on the clock to make the score 69–61. The final score of the game ended up being 78–68, but like I said before, I knew that we were losing this game for a while.
We just ran into an incredibly hot team. They killed us from deep and 3 of their guys hit 4 or more threes. They hit 16 3’s on the night and there’s just no amount of scheming that would have fixed that. Not a whole lot that you can do about that, unfortunately. We also lost in the assist battle, we were basically even in the rebounding department, and the same goes for the turnover margins. All in all, a really rough game. Here I was thinking that we could have gone undefeated prior to Big 12 play, and we left Charleston, SC this weekend with back-to-back losses.
I almost don’t want to do the Roundball Big 3 of the Game, but I don’t feel right abandoning it after two losses. If we get to three though I’m canceling it. Despite the loss…
Roundball Big 3 of the Game:
Honor Huff: 16 points (all in the second half)
Brenen Lorient: 11 points, 3 rebounds, 3 blocks
Jasper Floyd: 5 points, 6 rebounds, 3 assists, 4 steals
It’s a rough way to lose, but we have a while to get our minds and gameplans right. Our next game is next Sunday when we head back to Hope Coliseum and take on Mercyhurst. We have 5 more tune up games (and a game against Ohio State) before we start Big 12 play, so hopefully these last two games were a wakeup call. I love ya, Pops. I’ll see you next Sunday.
Round The Game 
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