CINCINNATI — Sean Miller doesn’t want his team to be worried about any bubbles or the chances of making the NCAA tournament.
To drive home this fact, he invoked the name of a late, great basketball icon to remind his team and Xavier fans what their attitude should be in their final two regular season games this week at Butler and home to Providence on Saturday.
“Kobe Bryant was asked questions and his answer was just an iconic answer,” the Xavier coach said. “He had such a killer instinct as a player, and one of the things he talks a lot is talked a lot about is being fearless. And the way he explained it, when asked about it, was being fearless starts with just a putting yourself out there and being willing to risk like, it may not go well.
“And I think when you start talking about the bubble, you’re almost accepting like ‘Oh my God, what if it pops’, and it creates this mindset of the good, the bad, the what ifs. It’s not about that. It’s about trying to be great. It’s about trying to play great. It’s trying to be ready. And the first thing, you have to be willing as a team to put yourself out there and go for it. And our team has done a good job of that. We have to continue to do a good job of that.”
Xavier remains squarely on the bubble with a road win at Butler Wednesday night likely meaning more than Saturday’s 83-61 romp over an impressive Creighton team. The opportunities are there for Xavier to reach 20 wins and then 21 before the Big East tournament in New York City. If Xavier wins their final two games, they are assured of claiming the fifth and final bye spot in the tournament, meaning they would only need two wins to reach the title game as opposed to having to play on Wednesday and play an extra day.
Xavier is 49th in the NET ranking, two spots ahead of Villanova and a half-game ahead of Nova in the race for fifth in the Big East. Both schools are well behind Cincinnati, which despite its lowly 7-11 mark in Big 12 play and a 1-10 record in Quad 1 games, has a NET ranking of 40.
“Life is only on the bubble if you allow it to be,” Miller added. “If you’re completely engrossed in the practice, communicating with players, getting ready for the opponent, holding everybody accountable and focused on the task at hand as we approached that day in the next game, all of that just is just kind of happening while you’re you’re immersed in that.
“It’s easier said than done, but I don’t really look at it as we’re on it, we’re off it as much as, how much can we be ready? What do we need to do to be better? And how do I get these guys locked in on being the best group we can be against Butler, that’s what we’ve talked a lot about. And things went well for us (Saturday). That can’t affect us in any way as we approach the next three or four days and and I think that’s that’s the mindset we’ve been in.”
As for Saturday, the Musketeers played their best all-around game of the season and got star play from their best players.
Zach Freemantle converted 10-of-14 shots from the field and finished with a team-high 23 points as Xavier cruised to a crucial 83-61 Big East win over Creighton Saturday at a raucous Cintas Center.
Ryan Conwell also added 20 points and Dante Maddox Jr. chipped in with 16 for Xavier (19-10, 11-7), which won its season-best fifth straight conference game to stay ahead of Villanova in the race for the fifth and final bye spot in next week’s Big East tournament. The Musketeers also snapped a four-game losing streak to the Bluejays, dating to their last win on March 10, 2023 in the Big East tournament.
“We’re getting better. We’re playing our best basketball of the year,” Miller told me. “All coaches want that to be the case, and right now that is the case for us. One of the things that we’ve done a good job of is we haven’t gotten too far ahead of ourselves, and yet we haven’t gotten too down if things haven’t gone well, and I think it’s really important for us, as we approach the final week of our regular season, that that remains true.
“We know we have a big test on Wednesday, on the road, against Butler. You know how we can come out of this game, leave this game, how we can now play on the road against the good a good team, really good crowd. You know that becomes our next challenge, and embracing it, being excited about it, being ready to play the game. And we’ve been that way for several weeks now, and you know I don’t see any reason why that can’t continue. We have a lot of guys that are highly motivated, in a good way.”
Ryan Kalkbrenner had 23 points and 12 rebounds and was the only player in double-figure scoring for Creighton (20-9, 13-5), which missed a chance to match its best-ever Big East 18-game record. Creighton’s loss combined with St. John’s win earlier in the day clinched the Big East regular season title for St. John’s.
Xavier, which had a 22-point second-half lead at Seton Hall dwindle to three six days earlier, built another 22-point lead Saturday. This time Creighton made a charge with a 12-0 surge, led by back-to-back threes from Steven Ashworth.
But after Creighton’s 16-2 run made it 57-49 Xavier with 10:29 remaining, Xavier answered with the next 14 points to put the game away.
Field goal shooting was the biggest factor in the game, as Xavier shot 55 percent on 33-of-60 shooting while Creighton hit just 6-of-24 from beyond the arc and finished 44.8 percent from the floor overall.
Jackson McAndrew hit a pair of three-pointers in the opening five minutes as Creighton opened with an 11-6 lead. But Xavier answered with the next seven points, sparking a 24-8 run that had the standing-room only crowd of 10,674 on its feet and gave the Musketeers a 30-19 lead with six minutes left in the first half.
The crowd, the eighth-largest in the 25-year history of the building, played a major factor in the energy of the Xavier defense, which forced the Bluejays to miss 13-of-15 shots during a 10-minute stretch.
Xavier took a 42-27 halftime lead thanks to 10 points apiece from Conwell and Dante Maddox Jr. and 18-of-34 shooting from the field. Creighton attempted 16 three-pointers, converting on only four in the opening 20 minutes.
Freemantle’s three-pointer capped an 11-4 spurt to open the second half and built the Xavier lead to 22, 53-31, with 16:15 remaining.
