CINCINNATI — Don’t look now, but the Xavier Musketeers have reason to hope for playing late in March.
The team that opened the Big East 1-4 – and couldn’t close against teams like Cincinnati, Marquette, St. John’s and UConn on the road – has won four of five and has reason to hope that their best basketball is ahead of them.
Their coach certainly believes that after Saturday’s 76-72 nailbiter in a revenge match against UConn at a raucous Cintas Center. It was the second rematch win over a quad one opponent, having now split their season series with UConn and Marquette.
Dante Maddox Jr. poured in 14 points, including three 3-pointers, to lead the Xavier Musketeers to a 76-72 win over the 19th-ranked UConn Huskies in a highly-charged Big East contest Saturday night in Cincinnati.
Dailyn Swain added 15 and Zach Freemantle converted a key three-point play with 2:10 left and also finished with 15 points for Xavier (13-8, 5-5), which recovered from blowing a 19-point lead in a road loss at St. John’s three days earlier.
It was that resilience that stuck out to Sean Miller in the moments after Saturday’s win.
“Taking on a lot of heartbreaking losses in which we played well enough to win but we weren’t able to, I think it’s a sign of good things for the rest of the year,” Miller told me. “Our schedule has been very challenging. We want to continue to grow and get better. You know, my hope is that really the last five games gives our team, confidence, not just (Saturday’s) win.”
The Musketeers haven’t just won four of five, they’ve done it against the mettle of the Big East. They easily could be on a five-game win streak after letting the game at St. John’s slip through their hands. Saturday could’ve been a regression to the mean for the Musketeers. Instead, Xavier is looking at the chance for another quad 1 win Wednesday in Omaha against Creighton.
This is a Xavier team that lost a huge piece in big man Lassina Traore to a knee injury before the season began. This is a Xavier team that lost Zach Freemantle after the crosstown shootout loss to UC. Things were getting dark quickly for Miller. Then he called the loss to St. John’s at a deflated and lethargic Cintas Center on Jan. 7 the low point of the season.
“Just very proud of everybody, staff, included, to stay with it,” Miller said. “Zach got injured, there was a couple of days that we thought we might lose it for the season. Those aren’t easy things to deal with. On the heels of not having Lassina (Traore) for the season and getting the good news that he will return (was encouraging).”
The Muskies has to prove they could handle Solo Ball and Alex Karaban Saturday. Ball had a game-high 20 and Aidan Mahaney had 14 to lead UConn (14-6, 6-3), which has alternated wins and losses in their last six games. Karaban was forced to the bench with his fourth foul with 11:19 left in the second half, forcing the Huskies to go with a smaller lineup until his return with 7:27 remaining. Karaban would foul out with 3:27 remaining, scoring just nine points on 4-of-13 shooting from the field.
After the two teams battled in a tense overtime game won by the Huskies, 94-89, on Dec. 18 in Hartford, Xavier and UConn played another back-and-forth, tightly contested game Saturday.
After voicing complaints about officiating and his televised outbursts following UConn’s overtime escape Tuesday against Butler, UConn coach Dan Hurley was the subject of jeers and profane taunts from the start from an energized Xavier crowd. Hurley showed restraint for most of the night on the sidelines.
Marcus Foster fouled Solo Ball while shooting a three with 1:29 remaining. Ball made all three free throws to cut Xavier’s lead to 74-72. After a defensive stop, Ball missed a wide open three with 25 seconds left but the Huskies grabbed the offensive rebound. But Jayden Ross dribbled out the shot clock with 5.9 seconds left before Foster drilled two free throws to ice the game.
Wearing their 1980s throwback uniforms before a raucous capacity home crowd, the Musketeers built a pair of 10-point first-half leads, 21-11 and 28-18, only to have UConn rally with runs of 7-0 and 8-0.
Aidan Mahaney knocked down a desperation three-pointer as the shot clock was expiring to cap an 18-4 UConn surge and give the Huskies their biggest first half lead at 36-32. After opening the game missing 13 of their first 19 shots, the Huskies recovered in the final seven minutes, making nine of their final 10 shots of the half.
The final 90 seconds of the first half was filled with momentum swings, featuring a pair of threes from Zach Freemantle and Marcus Foster while Mahaney drained another triple before Dayvion McKnight hit a jumper at the buzzer to cut UConn’s lead to one, 41-40, at the half.
UConn used a 6-0 spurt to capture a 47-43 lead with 17 minutes remaining but Xavier answered with an 18-5 run to take a 61-52 lead on a Dayvion McKnight jumper with 10:16 remaining.
The Musketeers have taken root from that low point and grown into a team that has proven to itself it can compete with the best of the best in the Big East.
