Published since 1915 by the students
of Xavier University
Published since 1915 by the students
of Xavier University
Nick DiFrancesco
Contributing Writer
The Musketeers went 1-1 last week, dropping a 63-59 decision to No.19 Louisville Cardinals on Thursday, before coming back to defeat the Morehead State Eagles, 72-55 on Saturday.
XU fought hard for 40 minutes last Thursday, but it was not enough to overcome Angel McCoughtry and the Cardinals. The three things that plagued Xavier were weakness on the defensive boards, lack of help defense in the paint and a once again stagnant zone offense.
XU yielded 21 offensive rebounds, and numerous possessions saw the Cardinals get at least three shot attempts up. The Cardinals also shot a good number of uncontested lay-ups, due to slow rotations and general confusion on defense.
Most of this can be attributed to the indecisiveness of the Xavier guards, as they never seemed sure just from where they should be getting help.
Did they have help coming underneath, assisting them in cutting off their player’s path to the basket? Or was there a shot-blocker coming over the top from the weak side? It seemed that XU couldn’t answer these questions all game.
On the offensive end, XU continued their trend of being befuddled by a zone defense. Louisville played a 2-3 match-up zone the entire game, continually taking XU out of their comfort zone.
The Musketeers have a series of plays designed just for zones, most of which involve setting picks to free up shooters when the ball is reversed.
The problem with these plays is that while they work the first time, they are fairly easy to defend against when you know what is coming.
To XU’s credit, they also ran some sets designed for man-to-man defenses, which can be effective against a match-up zone as well.
The one thing that the Lady Musketeers should have exploited more was their quickness on the perimeter.
Since a match-up zone usually stretches farther from the basket than a normal zone, this leaves wider lanes for driving to the hoop. XU was at their best offensively when they were penetrating the lane consistently.
Although the Musketeers clearly have a number of issues to work out, most of them are things that can be corrected through repetitions in practice. They shot 28.6 percent from the field against the Cardinals, yet only lost by four.
So far, the team’s only two losses have been ranked teams (U of L and Marquette).
XU rebounded nicely from their loss on Thursday, and did not allow themselves to lose two in a row at home by winning on Saturday.
Freshman Amber Harris garnered her third consecutive A-10 Rookie of the Week award, averaging 17 points, 10.5 rebounds and 2.5 blocks per game last week.
This week the Musketeers will play their first true road game, traveling to Penn State to take on the Nittany Lions on Thursday.
PSU comes in with a record of 5-5 on the season, and are led by guard Tyra Grant and forward Amanda Brown.
XU returns home to take on Coppin State at 2 p.m. on Sunday. The Eagles are 4-2 on the season, and are led by reigning MEAC Player of the Week Rashida Suber.
John LaFollette
Sports Editor
As a staunch defender of the original, the new and the cutting edge, it is with great regret that the Spectator offers this cliché to explain the sporting phenomena he has seen in the weeks since his overdue vacation: the more things change, the more they stay the same.
The oft-repeated adage is best descriptive of the state of college football this season. Just when we thought that some fresh (and deserving) newcomers from the Big East were about to make their debut on the BCS scene, the nay-sayers made their voices heard.
The nay-sayers were all college football purists, so bogged down with traditional ideals, which can only be embodied by traditional powerhouse schools, that they refused to accept the fact that football games can be won with flashy, unconventional offense.
When Louisville beat West Virginia 44-34 in a game that saw 78 points and 1,018 total yards, these nay-sayers crowed about how the BCS deserved better defensive teams. Never mind the fact that those same purists labeled last year’s 79-point, 1,030-yard offensive explosion in the Rose Bowl one of the greatest games in history.
But these things have a tendency to sort themselves out. Louisville fell to Rutgers and lost the Big East lead, West Virginia fell to South Florida and Rutgers fell to Cincinnati and West Virginia, landing Louisville in the Orange Bowl as the winner of the Big East’s champ’s automatic bid to a BCS bowl.
The nay-sayers were satisfied with Louisville facing Wake Forest (another team who is making its first BCS appearance) in the BCS’s third best bowl game, but the Spectator wonders whether the nay-sayers will give the winner the title they’ve certainly earned: bona-fide BCS contender.
The purists were also satisfied with the outcome of the Ohio State-Michigan game, because it finally cemented college football king’s crown atop the Buckeyes’ sticker-covered helmets (if only OSU fans could be satisfied by this). Michigan was still the consensus second best team in the country, for another two weeks anyway. That is, until the purists added another pre-requisite for national championship contender: conference champion.
For this unreasonable reason (Michigan did win the Big Ten; Ohio State is in a league of its own), and because of Florida head coach Urban Meyer’s shameless politicking, voters in the Coaches’ and Harris Poll, two thirds of the BCS ranking system, slotted Florida ahead of Michigan in the final week.
As if Michigan had somehow become a less deserving football team in the two weeks between its last game and the final ballots. As if Florida had somehow beaten lowly Kentucky by three touchdowns instead of two, and lowlier Florida State by more than seven points.
The Spectator doesn’t have a problem with an Ohio State-Florida national title game; putting Ohio State in double jeopardy against a team they’ve already beaten isn’t fair, even if that team is the second best in the country.
The Spectator does have a problem with the hypocrisy that is so evident among the college football conservatives.
It’s wrong to praise one offensive performance as an “instant classic” (the Texas-USC free-for-all in last year’s Rose Bowl), blast an identical performance as a no-defense, faux-football shootout (the Louisville-West Virginia free-for-all in early November) and ignore a similarly untraditional offensive performance when it’s between the two best teams in the nation (Ohio State and Michigan scored 81 points and racked up 900 total yards).
It’s wrong to complain about the BCS format, as Urban Meyer did for weeks before he thought his team had a chance to play for its title game, and then talk about the problems associated with the month-long layoff between football games instead of the fundamentally flawed system that got your team in the championship game to begin with, as Meyer did after the final BCS standings were announced.
It’s wrong to praise the strength of the SEC’s schedule (and consider it enough to boost the SEC champ into the title game), use an allegedly weak Big East schedule as reason to keep that league’s champion out of the title game, and reward another team, Notre Dame, that wins big against cupcake opponents (think Stanford, Navy, Air Force, North Carolina and Army) but gets blown out against legitimately good teams (think Michigan and Southern Cal) with a trip to the Sugar Bowl to play fourth ranked LSU.
It’s wrong for Coaches’ and Harris Poll voters to assume that the teams who dominated college football when the U.S. was mired in Vietnam are the same teams who should dominate when the U.S. is mired in Iraq.
It’s wrong for the Coaches’ and Harris poll to have so much influence on a team’s championship hopes.
It’s wrong for observers to decide which team is most deserving of a national championship opportunity, instead of the teams themselves.
It’s wrong to have a system that doesn’t work. It’s wrong to bring entrenched elitism into college sports.
Until he hears something that’s right about the way college football determines its national champion, the Spectator will always be looking forward to basketball season.
John LaFollette 
Sports Editor
The Xavier University swim teams completed a weekend invitational known as the Summa Care Invitational hosted by the University of Akron on Sunday, Dec. 3. The men, led by junior Shane Jenkins, were able to capture sixth place; the women finished eighth. Overall, the combined men’s and women’s scores were good enough for eighth in the ten team field.
Jenkins was able to capture third place in the 200 fly even with a time of 1:55, and fellow junior Matt Krouse took sixth place in the 200 backstroke also with a time 1:55. The women were led by senior Jill Cooke, who took sixth in the 1650 freestyle event with a time of 17:48.
This was the final meet of the 2006 calendar year for the Musketeer swimmers. Their next meet is Jan. 13, 2007 at Cleveland State.
The Xavier University track and field team began their season at the University of Findlay Oiler Open this past weekend. The women were led by sophomore Becky Clark who won the women’s one mile run, and fellow sophomore Luke Beuerlein took second place in the men’s 3,000 meter run. Less than a half second behind Beuerlein was junior Ben Milroy, followed closely by junior Tony Matheus, who was sixth.
Clark won the one mile run, second was captured by freshman Dani Meiners, third went to Caitlin Shagena and fourth was taken by sophomore Katie Dominguez.
In total the men and women combined for an outstanding 17 top ten finishes, including a sixth place in the men’s one mile run by sophomore Clinton Womack, and freshmen Katie Phillips and Bethany Moore were able to take fourth and eighth, respectively, in the women’s 800 meter run. In the women’s 3,000 meter run, senior Kelly Sraj came in seventh and junior Amanda Brown finished ninth. The Musketeers ran hard enough to place well against the stiff competition of Michigan, Dayton and Cincinnati.
The track team is scheduled to compete again on Saturday at the Golden Flash Gala on the campus of Kent State University.
