DAYTON — The Xavier Musketeers sure know how to thrill a crowd.
Marcus Foster scored a team-high 22 points, including four clutch 3-pointers, to help No. 11 Xavier rally past No. 11 Texas, 86-80, Wednesday in the final First Four game in Dayton.
Xavier coach Sean Miller called it one of the greatest games he’s been a part of as a college coach.
The sellout crowd of 12,546 at the University of Dayton Arena was as loud as any Xavier home game, essentially turning the arena just 40 miles away into Cintas North.
“That’s one of the greatest games I’ve been a part of,” Miller said. “Obviously the energy of the crowd, our fans certainly took advantage of the proximity to Cincinnati. And that emotion when we needed them, it was certainly a factor in the game. I think all three of these guys would tell you that we certainly felt it, really appreciated it.
“I thought we beat an excellent Texas team. They are disciplined. They have depth and talent. Johnson, we knew he was going to be a tall order to guard him, and it was. He had 23 points for no lack of effort on our part. We knew we beat a really good team from the SEC, and we knew going into the game it was going to be a great challenge.”
A challenge, indeed. The Musketeers had to overcome a 13-point deficit in the first half as the their top two scorers – Zach Freemantle and Ryan Conwell – were battling first half foul trouble and had to play through it for the entirety of the second half.
“I’m just so proud of these three and our team,” Miller said of Foster, Freemantle and Conwell, all on the dais with him after the game. “There were just times in the game where it didn’t feel like it was going to go our way, but I’ll just stick with resilience. It’s the badge of this group. Right when you think you’re going to count us out, we win. Right when you think things aren’t going to go well, we have found a way. I think that’s a great characteristic in any NCAA Tournament, and we certainly have that.”
Wednesday night was the kind of game that made you feel like the Musketeers could be capable of putting together a very special run in this NCAA Tournament.
Xavier (22-11) advances to play No. 6 Illinois in a first-round Midwest Region contest Friday in Milwaukee.
Freemantle overcame early foul trouble to finish with 15 points while Dailyn Swain and Ryan Conwell added 11 apiece for Xavier. Freemantle capped the night with a dunk just before the final buzzer as Xavier ran out the clock, sending the partisan Musketeer crowd into hysteria.
The final seven minutes featured intense momentum swings that saw Texas lose a 10-point lead, Xavier build a four-point lead and Texas rally to tie.
Tre Johnson finished with 23 points for Texas (19-16), while Tramon Mark added 16 for the Longhorns.
“I just think we were playing good as a team,” Johnson said. “It just got late and we had little miscommunication on some shots, and they made big shots in big moments.”
After the game, multiple reports surfaced that the Texas athletic department was ready to make a change and relieve head coach Rodney Terry of his duties after three years as Longhorns head coach.
“I’ve been in Texas 13 years, and there’s not a year I haven’t made the NCAA Tournament or been a part of the NCAA Tournament,” said Terry, who served as an assistant for 10 seasons under former head coach Rick Barnes. “I have a lot of pride in terms of being a Longhorn. I love being in Texas. I don’t think anyone’s been a part of Texas basketball has been more successful than myself. I’ve been a part of the top five seasons in this program’s history of this program. Our guys get a lot of credit for putting themselves in a great position to be here tonight. At the end of the day, it’s in God’s hands.”
Terry and Miller go way back to their days when Terry was at Fresno State and Miller was in Arizona.
“I’ve been in some great battles with Sean Miller,” Terry added. “Sean Miller is a great coach. He and I have had some really good battles against each other. He was at Arizona and I was at Fresno State. Here we had a good battle a couple years ago, Sweet 16 game. We’ve had a good history with Xavier, period, three games where we played for Sweet 16 to go to Elite 8 games with those guys. Great history between the two schools in NCAA Tournament play.
“You get here, just an incredible venue to play in, great fans here in Dayton. I wish we would have had more Dayton fans than Xavier fans, but nevertheless you’re always excited about competing in postseason play in an NCAA Tournament. This had the feel of a Sweet 16 game tonight. It really did. More so than even a first-round game.”
In the first half, Texas took advantage of a Xavier team that was playing desperate in front of a heavily partisan Musketeer crowd at the University of Dayton Arena, just 45 miles from its Cincinnati campus.
That desperation was raised to another level after Freemantle picked up his second foul just five minutes into the game. With his team struggling to find offense without him, Xavier coach Sean Miller put Freemantle back into the game three minutes later.
“We just try to not let it affect us. You’ve got to play the game the way you’re going to play the game,” Freemantle told me. “I mean, if they’re going to call fouls, and it is what it is. But if you let a couple fouls make you play soft and make you back up, or whatever, you’re going to end up giving up points, you end up losing the game. So we just got to, got to keep fighting through it.”
Then, with just under six minutes left in the first half, Ryan Conwell was whistled for his third foul. Texas took advantage by going to the paint, outscoring Xavier 26-16 in the lane.
The Musketeers appeared to gain valuable momentum just before the half on Jerome Hunter’s straightaway three that cut the Texas lead to six, 45-39. But Mark answered with a drive into the paint and floater that beat the buzzer and put Texas ahead, 47-39, at the half.
Xavier cut the deficit to four and had several chances to get closer. But then Freemantle picked up his third foul with 13 minutes remaining. On the ensuing possession, Johnson knocked down a three to expand the lead to 10, 62-52.
But thanks to threes from Marcus Foster and Jerome Hunter, Xavier forged a 65-65 tie on Hunter’s baseline jumper with 8:10 left.
“Really, my teammates just found me in the open spots, and I was just confident in my shot, and I just shot it and it went in today,” Foster said. “That’s a good day. We needed that performance for us to pull out the victory. And like I said, I’m glad my teammates were confident in me. I know Z-Free, RC, they found me a couple times. So I was able to get some clean looks. And that’s what we need. We need players to step up during these times and pull out wins.”
The thing that happens in this tournament is individual players, they rise to the challenge,” Miller said. “Marcus Foster is a very important player for us, but he hasn’t been our leading scorer very often. If he doesn’t rise to the challenge and go 4 for 5 from three or 8 for 9 from the floor, it might not matter how close we were to Cincinnati; I don’t know if we’d win.
Now the challenge is to regroup quickly and set the sights on Illinois late Friday night in Milwaukee. The Musketeers don’t want Wednesday to be a one-time dance. And if the effort and fight is any indication, it won’t be.
