A basketball's power comes through movement.
Xavier head coach Sean Miller likes to talk about the ball having energy.
That energy can't disappear, though, when the other team has the ball.
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That's what happened on Saturday afternoon at Cintas Center in a 95-82 win over Georgetown for No. 8 Xavier.
The Musketeers racked up 31 assists, shot 55% from the field and 57% from 3-point range.
But the other end of the floor was a problem for the Musketeers.
Because for as good as Xavier played offensively, the Musketeers were asleep at the wheel defensively.
Despite the win and the offense's recovery from its slumber earlier in the week in a loss at DePaul, Miller spent the entirety of his post-game press conference unhappy.
"I think you have to take some joy in winning a conference game. There are no easy nights here in the Big East. We just didn't play well today," said Miller. "(Georgetown point guard) Primo Spears was just fantastic ‒ 15-of-31 (shooting) ‒ man, I've coached a lot of games now. It's hard to get 31 shots up.
"... He had 37 points. He had 11 assists. We had no answer for him. We haven't had an answer for (Tyler) Kolek (Marquette's point guard). We haven't had an answer for (Umoja) Gibson (DePaul's point guard) and we don't have an answer really on defense."
Zach Freemantle tied his career-high 30 points with 11 rebounds and seven assists. Colby Jones added 20 points on 8-of-11 shooting. Adam Kunkel had 14 points and seven assists. Souley Boum added 10 points and seven assists.
Yet, Miller didn't want to talk about that.
"We scored 95 points and had 31 assists, nine turnovers. Obviously, that's probably Georgetown's Achilles' heel. That's great, but you just can't play offense," said Miller. "They scored right with us. It's a very helpless feeling. We couldn't stop Georgetown."
Miller complimented Freemantle and how great it was to see Jones bounce back from a rough shooting performance at DePaul, but inevitably, his words turned to the defensive end of the floor.
"The problem for us is you get a lot of value in who scored what, who rebounded what, how many assists, but we don't have the ability to guard individual players. We really don't. I've never seen anything like it, honestly," Miller said.
Xavier tried to guard Spears with Boum, Jones and freshman Desmond Claude. The Musketeers even tried to hard-hedge Georgetown's ball screens to slow Spears down. Nothing Xavier did defensively worked.
"None of those three could guard him," said Miller. "None of them. If it gets down to hey, let me applaud them for trying hard, I really can't do that either. There's a will that a basketball player sometimes has that when it comes down to getting a stop or hey this guy's hot, a player just rises, his effort level rises.
"The fact that he was able to shoot 31 shots I think speaks a lot to how easy it was for him."
Miller said his team doesn't have the ability to get stops.
"It's not important," he said. "It hasn't been important. And my fear is you always want to see your team grow and get better as the year goes on. On defense right now we're not because it's just not important. We're gonna see if we can fix it. We're gonna work hard. But that's gonna be a real, real telling tale of where our season goes from this point on."
Xavier's now 16-4 overall and 8-1 in the Big East Conference. The Musketeers didn't win their eighth Big East game until March 5 last season, and even though Xavier's already matched last season's conference win total, it's clear that Miller's worried about whether his team can cultivate something worthwhile on defense.
The Musketeers have an uphill battle next week with back-to-back road trips to UConn and Creighton.
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