Published since 1915 by the students
of Xavier University
Innocuous Spiders no match for Muskies
Sluggish win sets up showdown with first place Rhode Island
John LaFollette
Sports Editor
Senior forward Brandon Cole scored a career-high 17 points on just three field goals as the Xavier men’s basketball team cashed in on its numerous trips to the free throw line to beat the Richmond Spiders 71-50 last Saturday at Cintas Center.
Xavier’s fourth straight win improved their Atlantic 10 record to 9-3, keeping pace with the Rhode Island Rams who lead the conference at 10-3.
A sloppy Spider defense and sensitive officiating brought the Musketeers to the charity stripe 43 times. Xavier adjusted to the calls and fed the ball inside to Cole and senior forward Justin Cage, who were often fouled before they had an opportunity to shoot.
The Musketeers kept up their end of the bargain as well, making 33-of-43 for a 76 percent free throw shooting percentage. That was the highest total of free throws made in Cintas Center history, and the most Xavier has made since again going 33-of-43 against Massachusetts in the 2002 Atlantic 10 tournament.
Freshman forward Derrick Brown, whose athletic potential has typically surpassed his rebounding output this season, snagged a career-high 11 rebounds to go with his seven points.
“Coach wanted me to get some more defensive rebounds,” Brown said. “Getting four rebounds a game is not enough.”
Xavier had its way on both the offensive and defensive glass, out-rebounding the undersized Spiders 40-22.
With 46 percent of its offense coming from free throws, Xavier’s season-low-tying 18 field goals was to be expected.
The Musketeer defense held Richmond to just 37.8 percent shooting. During the current win streak, Xavier has allowed an average of just 55.5 points per game.
With their 51 points, Richmond became the second lowest scoring opponent of the year. Xavier held Coastal Carolina to just 46 points.
The win set up a major showdown with Rhode Island on Wednesday, Feb. 21.
The Rams will enter Cintas Center as a league leader riding a three-game winning streak. Most recently they beat Charlotte 86-69 at home.
Rhode Island has yet to face a team as talented as Xavier, and will likely have their hands full with a mostly healthy Musketeer lineup. Senior forward Justin Doellman rested for the majority of last week, which Xavier had off, and junior forward Josh Duncan continued his prolonged rehabilitation as well.
Both had suffered ankle sprains that seemed worrisome before Xavier’s recent expectation-meeting play.
With Duncan on the bench and Doellman playing with pain, the Musketeers have responded with four consecutive wins by an average margin of nearly 26 points.
Still, Xavier finds itself in a do-or-die mentality for the second year in a row. While some Musketeers admitted that they caught themselves looking past A-10 doormat Richmond, it is unlikely that any are looking beyond Rhode Island.
Some basketball analysts say that the Musketeers need to win their remaining four games and make a strong showing in the conference tournament for a chance to make the NCAA Tournament with an at-large bid.
A loss on the road in one of the last three games might not be as devastating for the Musketeers as some project, as long as it doesn’t keep them from a regular-season conference title.
To win that, though, Xavier will have to beat Rhode Island. Tip-off against the Rams is set for 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 21 at Cintas Center.
The Spectator: by John LaFollette
John LaFollette
Sports Editor
In response to several of this column’s devoted and concerned readers: The Spectator’s recent prolonged absence was NOT due to fascist censorship. Though it may have been warranted, given the base nature of the most recent installment of the column, the freedom of the press at Xavier University is still protected for the time being.
Rather, legitimate space constraints on the sports page forced the section editor to discard two well-written editions of this column, forever condemning them to the dreary annals of the Spectator Archives (extremely interested readers should contact the Spectator’s unpaid intern Jason, via the Newswire website, for information regarding the lost columns).
Fortunately, the snow is almost gone and the sports page is as spacious as Grampa’s Cadillac; the Spectator can grace these pages once again.
The aforementioned space constraints were conveniently timed, coming during an interminable period of unbearable dullness in the sporting world. The Super Bowl had ended and March Madness had not yet begun, at least not with the earnestness of mid-to-late February coverage.
With the exception of Tiger Woods’ continued dominance and the basketball-themed Circus-Circus that constituted the NBA’s All-Star Weekend, the down time almost had the Spectator believing ESPN’s marketing claim that NASCAR is actually a sport. Almost.
Invented (and profitable) hype aside, we begin at the end of January when the Indianapolis Colts beat the Chicago Bears 29-17 in Super Bowl XLI.
After the opening kickoff, the Spectator was sure the Colts would win 41-14. The Colts’ (and the Bears’) inability to hold on to the football prevented another title game palindrome.
For everyone counting (and the Spectator always is), the Colts became the second team that Adam Vinatieri has guided to a Super Bowl. In the hooplah surrounding the Colts’ win over arch-rival new England, with specific regard to the Peyton Manning-Tom Brady saga, a lot of people seemed to forget the five field goals that got the Colts into the game with the 15-6 win over Baltimore the week before.
Perhaps now, the Spectator hopes, all the Golden Boy disciples will recognize the impact of the kicker on Brady’s alleged success.
Apologies to the thousands of Bears fans whose wounds will be reopened in this column, but Chicago should have expected a let-down long before Super Bowl weekend. Really, the Bears’ grief should have started around week 13 when head coach Lovie Smith declared Grossman his guy at quarterback.
While Smith is one of the finest coaches in the NFL and deserving of far more than the league-low $1.385 million he was paid by the Bears last season, he has to convince the Chicago front office to get him a real quarterback. As any clear thinking Browns fan will attest (though they are hard to find), a team will go nowhere with an inconsistently good, occasionally awful quarterback.
Speaking of inconsistently good, the Spectator was sure that his unpaid intern Jason had hit another streak of bad research when he relayed Tim Hardaway’s spew of hateful homophobia last week.
Jason must have been mistaken; the Tim Hardaway with the long reputation of league nice guy; the five-time All Star turned goodwill ambassador; the enthusiastic retiree on track to become one of the NBA’s senior statesmen; that same Tim Hardaway could not have said repeatedly, and with such assuredness, that he hates gay people.
The Spectator isn’t sure if Hardaway’s misguided “apology” made things better or worse. He said on Monday that he didn’t mean “hate” in the way it sounded, but in the sense that he hates broccoli or potato chips. Unfortunately, the clarity and Rocker-esque candor with which he made his original statement make it hard to take him seriously.
The truth, as the Spectator sees it, is that Hardaway is one of the many, many professional athletes who harbor, and are comfortably oblivious to, some fear of difference. The insulation surrouding the lives of professional athletes is such that they aren’t forced to tolerate forms of difference until they retire and reenter the real world, frought with the daily perils of openly gay people and the experience of riding the No. 7 train.
Hardaway, who lost numerous business deals in the fallout of his comments, has said that he is receptive to the idea of homophobia counseling, though it appears he is only so now that his livelihood is affected by his views on the subject.
If the kind of counseling White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen underwent is any kind of indicator of what we should expect from a post-therapy Hardaway, John Amaechi and every other gay athlete will be justifiably afraid of revealing their sexuality while they still share a locker room with other professional athletes.
The Hardaway debacle came right before some of the most intense college basketball all season. Top-ranked Florida fell to up-and-coming SEC contender Vanderbilt, who is a step ahead of most of the league in the wacko-coach category (but still behind Tennessee).
Ohio State continued to dominate weaker teams at home, and Louisville won its second straight road game against nasty Big East competition. Somehow the Buckeyes won a top spot in one poll over Wisconsin, despite losing to the Badgers earlier in the year.
Both teams are clearly inferior to Florida, who destroyed OSU this season, but the Gators’ bad day at Vandy was ill-timed with just two weeks to go in the season.
To every true sports fan’s delight, Duke are reeling this month, and the Gonzaga Bulldogs appear to be out of the NCAA Tournament, barring a conference tourney win, for the first time since 1998.
Gonzaga’s woes stem from the marijuana and hallucinogenic mushroom possession charges facing second-leading scorer and rebounder Josh Heytvelt.
The Spectator thinks that while he is seriously, transcendently bummed out at the present moment, man, Heytvelt will thank Washington authorities in the long run for nipping his pot problem in the bud before he would certainly smoke his future away.
Besides, even a straight-edge square like the Spectator knows that tripping behind the wheel is a bad idea.
This Week in the A10
Charlotte senior E.J. Drayton averaged 17 points and 8.5 rebounds while shooting 60 percent from the field in a pair of contests.
Junior Kieron Achara of Duquesne scored 13 points and grabbed nine rebounds in a Feb. 14 win at Richmond.
Fordham junior Bryant Dunston had 18 points and 10 rebounds in a Feb. 15 losing effort to Massachusetts.
Senior Carl Elliott of George Washington averaged 13 points, seven rebounds and seven assists in a pair of games last week.
La Salle freshman Kimmani Barrett averaged 13.5 points in two games, including a career-best 19-point effort on Feb. 14 in the Explorers’ 77-72 win over Temple.
Massachusetts senior and A-10 Player of the Year candidate Stephane Lasme recorded 17.5 points, seven rebounds and five blocks in two contests.
Rhode Island freshman Lamonte Ulmer scored a career-high 12 points on 4-of-5 shooting in the Rams’ 86-69 win over Charlotte on Feb. 17.
Freshman Brian Morris scored 14 points on Feb. 14 in Richmond’s 69-66 win over Duquesne.
St. Bonaventure senior Paul Williams scored 20 points and added 13 rebounds versus Saint Joseph’s on Feb. 17.
Junior Pat Calathes of Saint Joseph’s averaged 17.5 points and nine rebounds in a pair of victories, while freshman teammate Darrin Govens averaged 14 points.
Saint Louis sophomore Kevin Lisch averaged 17 points and six rebounds in two games, including a 24-point effort in the Billikens’ 59-55 win over La Salle on Feb. 17.
Junior Dustin Salisbery averaged 18.3 points and added eight steals in three contests for Temple.
John LaFollette 
Sports Editor
Baseball falls to 0-3
The Xavier baseball team opened the season on a losing note, dropping its opening series against the Winthrop Eagles, 0-3. The Muskies fell 3-2, 8-2 and 3-2 in the series.
Junior Michael Lucas pitched six shut-out innings in the series opener for the Musketeers surrendering only one hit and one walk against three strikeouts. Xavier took a 2-0 lead in the third on a string of three hits with RBIs by senior Jordan Wolf on a triple and sophomore Adam Pasono with a single.
Senior Mike Creevy came on in the seventh to relieve Lucas and gave up two runs to the Eagles. A wild pitch and two singles plated the go-ahead run for Winthrop.
In the second game of the series, senior Bill Konecny started for Xavier, giving up only two unearned runs before being relieved in the sixth by sophomore Brett Greenwell who gave up six runs in the seventh inning just after the offense had tied the game.
The final game of the series saw the Muskies start freshman Zac Richard on the hill. He fared well giving up five hits, three runs and three strikeouts. He gave way to junior Kyle Cowden who scattered five hits over one and third innings.
The XU offense got going in the seventh with a pair of runs. Junior Robbie Kelley had an RBI single that scored Pasono who reached base on an error and moved senior Adam Lipski to third.
Sophomore Sean Farrel followed Kelley with his own RBI single bringing in Lipski from third. Unfortunately it was too little too late as the Muskies were not able to scratch out a tying run in the final two innings.
