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Mack Squeezing Most Out of Depleted Roster
2/24/2013
At times, and let’s be honest, it has been most of the time, the Xavier Musketeers have been agonizingly frustrating this season. There have also been times where talent has shined out of the darkness that has become a lost season, at least by recent standards.
Of course those recent standards were set with squads loaded with talent and star guards. The list is impressive: Tu Holloway, Mark Lyons, Jordan Crawford, B.J. Raymond, Drew Lavender, Stanley Burrell, etc. Success in college basketball and, in particular, March is often determined by the strength of a team’s guard play. Xavier has had that for the past decade, and more. Expectations, understandably, were raised for the program.
But it would be hard to have expected much more out of this Musketeer team. Chris Mack has squeezed a lot out of a team that only has nine scholarship players, with only seven of those players averaging more than ten minutes.
Only two of those players score in double digits and make a regular impact in every game. Travis Taylor developed this season as the senior leader and effective post player. And Semaj Christon has given Musketeer fans the type of player they can enjoy watching for years to come. It’s not difficult to envision a scenario where his jersey might eventually be lifted into the rafters of the Cintas Center.
But other than Christon and Taylor, scoring has often been hard to come by for Mack’s team. Where else are the points supposed to come from? Isaiah Philmore, like Taylor last year, hasn’t come along far enough to be regularly effective in the Atlantic 10. He has shown flashes of potential lately, scoring in double digits in four of his last six games.
Dee Davis is the characteristic “glue guy” that Xavier has always had. He also looks like a guard that is being asked to do too much in the current system. Games like Saturday's against VCU remind you of his talent, though. As well as his importance to the team.
Justin Martin’s progress at the end of last season and the beginning of this one was slowed by a concussion against Vanderbilt. Only recently has he started to look like an effective shooter again. And at this stage in their college careers, Brad Redford and Jeff Robinson are what they are—complimentary players.
Let’s do the math, then. Xavier has two solid, effective players that Mack can count on to do the same thing every game. They have five other complimentary players that tally regular minutes. So Mack has to run out a lineup that features three players that probably shouldn't be starting at this stage in their development/career. Guys like Davis, Philmore and Martin might very well turn into terrific starters next year. Right now, they aren’t.
So when you stop and think about how this season has unfolded, with Xavier positioning itself for a bye in the Atlantic 10 tournament in Brooklyn, it’s actually fairly impressive. There have been unexpected wins on Xavier's schedule and equally disappointing losses. Seven of their eleven losses have come by a total of 22 points. All of them could have turned on a play here or there.
Imagine if Xavier had another scorer, they could be sitting at 22-4, instead of 15-11. They were not that far away this season. It’s hard to imagine Mack could have gotten more from this roster, without that other scorer or two. Whether those scorers could have been Dez Wells and Mark Lyons (probably, actually, undoubtedly) or Myles Davis and Jalen Reynolds (potentially), is up in the air and largely irrelevant in the development of this season.
Xavier will be better next year for the growing pains of this season. For the close losses and the experience of playing in big games. Davis and Christon will be better ball handlers, shooters and leaders. Philmore will be a better post player. Martin will learn to be effective and intelligently aggressive for an entire 30+ minutes.
The rest of the pieces, with Davis and Reynolds, and Mack's recruiting class, will fall into place around them. The hope is that the future will continue to be brighter than the present on Victory Parkway.
But if this is as disappointing a season Xavier has in years, everyone should be able to live with that. Brighter days are ahead. Ones as bright (and probably brighter) than the days since passed.
As is, with the Musketeers competing in a tough Atlantic 10, where anyone can beat anyone on any given night, it’s difficult to be disappointed.
And with quality opponents still remaining, the season is far from over. Stranger things have happened with this program, which has won four games in four days twice in the Atlantic 10 tournament. Not saying that history will repeat itself. But it’s always been difficult to count this team and program as finished until it is.
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