Xavier vs. Mount St. Mary’s: Preview, Keys to the Game

November is here and with it is the return of College Basketball and the four month prelude to the greatest sporting event of the year. Xavier returns very little from a team that endeared and entertained but did not achieve all that much in year one under Richard Pitino, but the transfer portal has been good to the Musketeers and there is hope, bordering on expectation, that this group can get back to the top half of the Big East and in the mix for the NCAA Tournament. The first outing comes against a Mount St. Mary’s team that has found their way into the First Four four times since 2014 and is coming off a 6th place finish in the final season the MAAC called itself the MAAC.

Team Fingerprint

The Mountaineers are led by third year coach Donny Lind, who took them to the tournament in year one, knocking off American before falling on the wrong side of a 44 point margin against Duke. His teams tend to hang their hat on the defensive end, with their basic strategy being to make life as difficult as possible inside the arc and dare teams to shoot over them. Opponents have shot 45% of their attempts from deep in both of Lind’s seasons and only hit at a 32% rate which, when coupled with Mountaineers holding opponents to 46% from inside the arc, gave them a top 25 EFG defense in the country last season. How you end up taking a defense that makes life that tough for opponents and turn it into 6th place in the MAAC is a multifaceted process. First, the Mountaineers put their opponents on the line an above average but not extraordinary amount and they almost never turned opponents over. Their rebounding was decent at both ends, but they set themselves up to lose the freebie battle pretty much every night out. That flows right into the other part of the problem: their offense was really bad. The glaring problem in both previous seasons under Lind has been turnovers. They turned the ball over on 21.5% of their possessions his first season and then somehow got worse last year, ending up at 364th out of 365 in turnover rate with a mark of 22.4. Combine that with pretty poor shooting from the field and a team free throw mrk of 67% and you have a recipe for the 330th best offense in the country.

Players

The name to know is 6’7″ wing Abdou Khadre Kebe, who was a unanimous First Team All-Metro selection this preseason. His line of 7.7/5.6/1.0 as a Sophomore last year, but he was also named to the All-MAAC Defensive Team and hit double figures in 5 out of 11 games he played after January 1. He is joined by guard Anthony Arrington among returners to note, who averaged 5.7/2.1/1.1 last season after coming over from Wofford and is seeking a 5th year of eligibility. Wilguens Jr. Exacte is a Drake transfer who missed time with a foot injury last year, but averaged 7.3/4.5/1.6 for the Bulldogs last year. Redd Thompson Jr. joins from Longwood where he averaged 10.3 points per game as a streaky scorer and lit up Wake Forest for 22 points in 20 minutes on December 17. Gonzaga transfer Cade Orness will also likely feature, having played just 21 minutes in his two years in Spokane as well as a pair of freshmen in Julien Smith and Noah Limol alongside Spanish guard Miquel Llompart all making their college debuts tonight.

Three Keys

Turn them over- Xavier’s saving grace in their 66-62 season opening win over Marist last year was the 18 turnovers they forced. It was a game that was more interesting than many wanted it to be or than it necessarily needed to be, but Xavier did use their defensive pressure to win the turnover battle by a margin that put them over the top in the game. Mount St. Mary’s has been extremely easy for teams to turn over the last couple of years and Xavier can go a long away towards making this opening night a much more relaxing and pleasurable viewing experience by taking advantage of that.

Don’t let someone score 24 points on 7-11 shooting like Rhyjon Blackwell did- Seems pretty self explanatory. Perhaps pushing a little deeper, Xavier’s inability to keep Marist’s guards out of the lane and their own defense out of rotation portended bad things for the season to come on opening night last year. Xavier has gotten bigger and more experienced at the guard position this year and the hope would be that Washington, Westry, Pozzato, etc. will be eager to set the defensive tone tonight.

Try to click early- It is no secret that Xavier’s first three buy games last season were pretty tough sledding. A pair of single digit wins and a blowout loss were a rough start for an entirely new roster of players largely inexperienced at the high major level. It really wasn’t until the ODU, Texas A&M Corpus Cristi, and Saint Francis games that X really seemed to hit their stride, by which time their only chances at a non conference win over an NCAA Tournament team had passed them by. Xavier has three games before Mississippi State and another largely new roster. Putting it together earlier on is important to building a resume and tonight is a chance to do that.