Florida game thread

[muskieman]

Happy Thanksgiving and let's go X. This could be the most important game to date, and a win could bring a possible date with Duke

[Kevin Reilly]

Happy Thanksgiving everybody. Nice win for the good guys. Duke tomorrow. Boum, Jones . Nunge and Freemantle played well on offense .We have to eliminate those lazy , sloppy hand off passes. Boum especially is careless on those hand offs. Duke is huge , young and talented. So far they are really shooting poorly. Xavier could get a big victory if they take care of the ball .Fun to watch the team again. Nice to see Jones nail some 3- pointers. Go X

[xaviermuskie2003]

Happy Thanksgiving everybody. Nice win for the good guys. Duke tomorrow. Boum, Jones . Nunge and Freemantle played well on offense .We have to eliminate those lazy , sloppy hand off passes. Boum especially is careless on those hand offs. Duke is huge , young and talented. So far they are really shooting poorly. Xavier could get a big victory if they take care of the ball .Fun to watch the team again. Nice to see Jones nail some 3- pointers. Go X

I think we beat Duke by double digits. Havent been impressed with them at all. We match up well.

2 of their top 3 players are freshman (along with a 3rd frosh who is a key rotation piece).

X counters with
6th year center
4th year starter PF
3th year starter SF
5th year SG
5th year SG

Jack will handle their freshman center on the interior. He's 5 years older and matches his size. Shouldnt be an issue.

Coaching matchup is a wash.

[Anti-Homer]

Agreed.

Lazy passes and turnovers particularly by Free cannot happen. The perimeter D continues to be subpar. However, thankfully their offense continues to click on all cylinders.

Duke is ridiculously talented and big. However, amazing what a different HC with virtually the same personnel from last year can do. Miles and Tandy are contributing good minutes which will be critical tomorrow with the tri-towers of Duke with respect to Miles.

Great sets called by Miller. Accelerating the rebuild. Win or lose, there is a lot of reason to be positive this and subsequent years.

[Timeless]

Happy Thanksgiving everybody. Nice win for the good guys. Duke tomorrow. Boum, Jones . Nunge and Freemantle played well on offense .We have to eliminate those lazy , sloppy hand off passes. Boum especially is careless on those hand offs. Duke is huge , young and talented. So far they are really shooting poorly. Xavier could get a big victory if they take care of the ball .Fun to watch the team again. Nice to see Jones nail some 3- pointers. Go X

KenPom has Duke favored by 3

[pdxmuskie]

I was going to say Free was an absolute disaster on offense because he kept giving the ball to FL. Looking at the stats, he was supposedly 5 for 5 from the floor but 7 turnovers. I am fairly certain he missed a shot but even 5 for 6 would be great shooting. 7 turnovers cannot happen. That is a horrific number and is much worse than 7 missed shots. He also had the worst defensive play I've ever seen but then a FL player did something similarly bad.

His first bad game of the year and X won so all is fine.

Nunge, Boum and Jones were great. Kunkel had a solid game.

Claude struggled a bit but had a nice shot. Miles did give some solid minutes. Not a lot of minutes but enough to give Nunge some rest. This is key as previously mentioned in another post.

The end of the first half won this game for X. Down 4 and then suddenly up 4 in about a minute of game time was huge.

I agree that Duke looks very beatable. They didn't play bad against Oregon State. Oregon State simply controlled the tempo and played good D. The game against X will look very different. I'm not sure how Duke will look in a more up tempo game but we matchup well with them. If Xavier plays well, they should win. Limiting turnovers will be crucial. Being strong on the glass is also key. I don't see us shutting them down defensively as this Xavier team is limited in that capacity. Outscoring them is unfortunately the only option but staying in position defensively should limit 2nd opportunities and keep FG% to a manageable level. Hopefully we are hot shooting but the bigs should be capable of putting up a good number of points. It was fun watching Xavier live. Can't wait for tomorrow.