STORRS, Conn. — Rare is the occasion that my power rankings opens with a dateline, but I was in the building Wednesday night for Xavier’s 82-79 win over UConn, a top-20 Big East affair.
So this week’s Hey Nineteen will start there.
What began as a Xavier bombardment ended in a gripping Musketeers escape inside a bumping Gampel Pavilion, which at a few points hit ear-splitting levels after Connecticut managed to cut a 17-point second-half deficit down to a one-possession game.
“That was the loudest building I’ve ever been in,” Xavier associate head coach Adam Cohen told me outside the team locker room after the win.
Xavier led wire to wire, opening the game 9-0 in the first four minutes, then bloating its lead to 15 points by halftime — a margin that would prove pivotal after UConn made a couple of second-half pushes to bring some much-needed drama to the best matchup of the night in college basketball.
UConn’s Jordan Hawkins had 28, the second-highest point total of his career. In fact, if not for Huskies coach Dan Hurley calling timeout with 20.2 seconds to go, Hawkins would’ve gotten at least 30. With Hawkins hunting for space and Xavier up 80-77, Hurley had seen enough of the broken play unfolding 15 feet in front of him. He called timeout as Hawkins rose up for a 2-point shot. The attempt went in but didn’t count. The Huskies missed their next shot and Xavier held on.
It was UConn’s sixth loss in eight games. The Huskies have gone from 14-0 and No. 2 in the polls to 16-6 and sixth in the Big East (5-6). For all of UConn’s issues — Andre Jackson’s inaccurate shooting; the lack of production from bigs Adama Sanogo and Donovan Clingan on Wednesday; worries over bench players’ production thinning out; the weakening perimeter defense — Hurley wasn’t defeated when I spoke with him after the game.
“We can get this thing back on track,” Hurley told CBS Sports. “We can win the Big East Tournament.”
I’ve spoken with Hurley after games before and seen him much more frustrated and in desperate want of answers. This wasn’t that. He has confidence in this team, and despite UConn’s monthlong swoon, I agree with Hurley. No matter where UConn is seeded in the league bracket at Madison Square Garden, it will be a threat to beat all other teams.
But Xavier will be favored to win that thing when all 11 teams convene in Manhattan in March. Sean Miller’s 17-4 Musketeers are one of the biggest stories in the sport. Miller said Wednesday’s win was his team’s best of the season, and it’s hard to argue (even with the home victory vs. Marquette). Xavier just swept its season series with UConn for the first time as Big East brethren.
“They have a very, very good team,” Miller said of the Huskies. “Certainly they’re hard to beat here. And the other part of it is, kind of how the game was. How many times do you see a team just never be able to recover in the second half? And we fixed ourselves about two or three times, where I’m not sure every team is able to do that with how many things were going well for them with the crowd.”
Miller gave me an all-access look at Xavier in November at the PK85 event in Portland, Oregon. On Wednesday night, he told me his team has grown immensely from the one that went 1-2 in that event with a win over Florida and competitive losses to Duke and Gonzaga.
“Desmond Claude and Jerome Hunter have really become very good players for us, Big East players,” Miller said. “Souley (Boum) he’s taken a big step, in terms of his shooting and his performance.”
Boum, who came via from UTEP, is one of the five best transfers in the country, averaging 16.8 points, 5.0 assists and 4.1 rebounds. He’s helping guide a team that is elite offensively (fourth in points per possession) and one big happy collective at the moment. As I stood in the hallway in the bowels of Gampel Pavilion, Xavier players were sporadically pouring out of the locker room and downright beaming. Goofing on each other, gassing each other up. Life’s grand when you’re 17-4 and alone atop the Big East.
Miller’s made this all work right away, and for a team that fell apart and missed last year’s NCAAs. He looks like a man carrying less on his psyche as well; in late December, he was cleared by the Independent Resolution Panel of the IARP in its ruling on Arizona’s NCAA case from when he was coach of the Wildcats.
“Life is different, it really is,” Miller told CBS Sports. “It’s different for my family. It’s different for me. I truly can coach, you know, because you love it. Coach players, plan practice. It’s not easy when a lot of other things are happening. So yeah, kind of grateful that five-year-and-two-month period of time is closed.”
Five years, two months. A ridiculous amount of time for anyone to await judgment in college sports, but that’s how long it took between the FBI case breaking in 2017 and Miller’s involvement in the matter finally ending.
Heading into this season, expectations for Xavier were something like this: Probably third-, fourth- or fifth-best team in the conference. Miller could get suspended a few games, a bargain the school was more than willing to deal with. But above that, an NCAA Tournament showing of any kind would be cherished after the program’s longest drought in decades.
Almost three months into the season, everything has shifted. Not only is this the best team in the Big East, it’s growing into a rare year in which Xavier, one of the best programs to never make a Final Four, is molding itself into a national championship contender.
As a result of its best win of the season, the Muskies move up five spots in this week’s Hey Nineteen. Let’s get to the list.
Hey Nineteen Power Rankings
Reminder: My rankings are not solely about whom I think is “best.” This is a weekly encapsulation of the 19 hottest, most successful and/or most *interesting* teams, combining team quality with win quality but also having no shame for recency bias and rewarding significant winning streaks. All records shown are vs. D-I competition.
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