The late-season spiral continued on Saturday for Xavier's men's basketball team against Seton Hall at Cintas Center as the Musketeers suffered their fourth loss in a row, 82-66.
Xavier neglected one very important thing against Seton Hall: defense.
Defense requires energy, effort, emotion and execution, and the Musketeers didn't check many of those boxes in one of their biggest games of the season.
"When you hit a little bit of adversity, what's your response gonna be?" Xavier head coach Travis Steele said after the game in his post-game press conference. "And I didn't think our response was very good tonight. With about four minutes left in the first half, they threw a punch at us and I thought we got staggered a little bit. Didn't like the blank looks on our face."
Seton Hall shot 53% from the field, 42% from beyond the arc and 80% from the foul line. Xavier's defense provided little to no resistance stopping the Pirates.
"We have to win with our defense and we haven't been doing that the last few games and that's gotta change," said Steele. "Changing defenses, playing two-three (zone), picking up full-court – that's just a mask, that's a band-aid. We have to play man-to-man defense, we have to do our system, we have to play with max effort. Guys can't go for career nights against us."
Seton Hall star Jared Rhoden went for 30 points and Tray Jackson went 5-for-5 from beyond the arc and finished with 17 points.
"Complete joke on the defensive end and that's on me," said Steele. "That's not on our guys, that's completely on me."
The Pirates averaged 1.26 points per possession, a number that will consistently make it hard to win any games in the Big East Conference.
To make matters worse, when Xavier cut the deficit to six points, 55-49, in the second half, all of a sudden the Musketeers got careless with the ball and left a lot of points off the board on missed free throws (13-for-23).
"You think about all the free throws that we missed tonight," said Steele. "We work on free throws every single day and every way imaginable ... I thought it took a lot of momentum away from our guys tonight.
"Then we had some really bad turnovers during that stretch in the second half, about four or five that were just mind-blowing turnovers that really killed us and led to some easy baskets. I think Seton Hall scored 17 points off of our turnovers."
Steele said the defensive debacle had nothing to do with what Seton Hall ran.
"We knew what they were gonna run, we gotta execute it a heck of a lot better," said Steele.
Xavier's inability to get stops on defense bled into every other facet of the game.
"It's like a pattern," said Steele. "It's like who's gonna have a career night against Xavier? That's an absolute joke. Guys getting drove right around, right to the rim."
Steele said, without watching the film, he didn't think any of his players executed up to Xavier's standard on defense.
Colby Jones was really the only bright spot offensively with 20 points on 8-of-10 shooting to go with 10 rebounds, but the offense wasn't the issue. Xavier shot 46% from the field and 41% from beyond the arc.
The Musketeers weren't ready to defend and they paid a steep price with another lopsided loss on their home floor.
Steele's demeanor and message in his press conference after the game told the story pretty well. So did the boos raining down in Cintas Center from the home crowd.
Xavier forward Zach Freemantle was booed when he checked into the game for freshman Cesare Edwards, and at one point in the second half, Xavier's student section started chanting, "Fire Steele."
When asked about the fan base's reaction after the game, Steele said, "If fans are gonna bother you booing or saying stuff on social media, then you're not made to be here. Toughen up. We got a great fan base. They care. They're passionate. I want people in that gym. We want as many people as we can. We put a performance tonight, that's fair. It's fair, so toughen up."
With the loss, Xavier's now 17-11 overall and 7-10 in the Big East Conference. The Musketeers have lost six of their last seven games.
Xavier's falling in the wrong direction at the worst possible time. With only two games left in the regular season, the Musketeers are in danger of sliding their way to the NCAA Tournament bubble.
Source link
