Crosstown Shootout

Saturday, December 9th, 2023
6:30 PM
Cintas Center
FS1

The Bearcats (7-0, KenPom #28, NET #17) will make the less than 4-mile journey to the Cintas Center to take on Xavier (4-5, KenPom #49, NET #89) this weekend for the 91st edition of the Crosstown Shootout.

The Musketeers enter the match-up having suffered three consecutive home losses to the likes of Oakland (78-76), Houston (66-60), and Delaware (87-80). Xavier notably lost the turnover battle 42-28 over those three games.

Year 2 of Sean Miller's second stint at Xavier has gotten off to a rocky start mostly due to growing pains from a massive roster overhaul.

6'9 forward Zach Freemantle (15.1 ppg, 8.1 rpg in 22/23) and 6'7 forward Jerome Hunter (7.8 ppg, 4.4 rpg in 22/23) have not featured and are both expected to miss this entire season due to health issues.

2nd-year 6'5 guard Desmond Claude (16.1 ppg, 3.9 rpg, 3.3 apg) is the only returning contributor from last year's Sweet 16 squad, but has been getting some scoring help from 5th-year 6'2 guard Quincy Olivari (16.1 ppg, 4.8 rpg), a Rice transfer.

The Musketeers rotation only features 4 players who had college basketball experience coming into this season.

The Bearcats are looking to secure their first win at Cintas Center since 2001 when the arena made its Crosstown Shootout debut.

Xavier board is in meltdown after last night's loss to Delaware. They were so disorganized and just threw the ball away multiple times. They did play Houston really hard. I'd say with guys Newman, Frederick, and Lukosius guarding the wings UC will do well. Desmond Claude and Olivari are the main two threats. UC will have to be physical for sure. But I bet they can drive on them fairly easily.

Xavier's defense has been wildly inconsistent this year. They have six games giving up 0.95 points per possession or less, but in the other three games they gave up more than 1.15. Nothing in between. The one constant in those bad defensive games is a lack of turnovers. Other aspects have varied - Delaware got to the rim 36 times, Oakland made 22 of 33 from inside the arc, and Purdue made 47% from three. We're capable of replicating any of those, and we usually take care of the ball. So hopefully we can hand Xavier another 1.15 points per possession. They defend the three point line well though, having given up double digit threes only once this year - to Bryant who went just 11 for 34. Houston ran into trouble by only converting 6 of 19 rim attempts. So clearly Xavier is capable of defending inside and out, they just haven't done it consistently.

The offense has been just ok, barely cracking the top 100 on Torvik. They don't shoot much from beyond the arc at all, and have yet to make double digit threes in a game this year. They put up a lot of midrange shots, accounting for over 30% of their field goal attempts, same as our squad last year. Most of those come from Desmonde Claude and Dayvion McKnight, each of whom shoot more from midrange than the rim or beyond the arc. Olivari is their best offensive producer, doing his damage from three and the stripe. Big man Abou Ousmane is their highest usage player, but his efficiency is dragged down by a high turnover rate, poor free throw shooting, and hitting only 35% from midrange.

I think the gameplan needs to focus on Olivari and Ousmani. We need to run Olivari off the 3pt line and be very aggressive on Ousmani, forcing him into a turnover or free throws rather than anything easy at the rim. Let the other guys take their midrange shots.

Awful first half. The soft schedule did the team no favors heading into this game.

Frustrating that we can never hit threes against Xavier. We've had quite a few good looks, but we're only 1 for 13 in the first half. If we made even 4 out of 13 (still only 31%), we'd have the lead.

Lakhin is trying to do too much and we put Olivari on the line 4 times, but aside from that we're not playing that bad. We've got to hit some shots.

We forgot that Olivari just wants to shoot threes. When he gets a step, the defender shouldn't try to recover. Stay on his hip.

What. The. Hell. Is. Skillings. Doing

No double on Ousmane. Day Day with a terrible pass followed by a terrible early shot clock long two. Just a horrible sequence.

We're not even hedging screens on Olivari. Do we not understand he's their only good scorer and he's always looking for a three or a foul? We're not doing basic things to stop that.

sedziobs said:

We're not even hedging screens on Olivari. Do we not understand he's their only good scorer and he's always looking for a three or a foul? We're not doing basic things to stop that.

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Poor coaching, as always.

Bcatfollower said:

Poor coaching, as always.

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There's some truth to that. Should have put Newman on him much much sooner.

Skillings should not be allowed to shoot outside of the paint. Ever.

UC is the St Joe to Xavier’s Villanova. Should just stop playing the game. Or they should.

TheLivingLegend said:

Skillings should not be allowed to shoot outside of the paint. Ever.

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All these players get false confidence playing nobody’s, then can never show up when it counts. Cincinnati sports are ridiculous.

We're significantly better than this Xavier team. If both teams shoot normal percentages we win by double digits. This is a frustrating game, but let's not lose sight of that.

sedziobs said:

We're significantly better than this Xavier team. If both teams shoot normal percentages we win by double digits. This is a frustrating game, but let's not lose sight of that.

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Wes. Skillings. Simas. CJ.

Disaster.

sedziobs said:

We're significantly better than this Xavier team. If both teams shoot normal percentages we win by double digits. This is a frustrating game, but let's not lose sight of that.

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I fail to see how uc is significantly better. We did nothing better and the fact that our players didn’t play normal is because our normal was defined against a bunch of poor teams. Wes is in year three and still can’t come close to beating x. I believe Brannen had a win.

Bcatfollower said:

I fail to see how uc is significantly better. We did nothing better and the fact that our players didn’t play normal is because our normal was defined against a bunch of poor teams. Wes is in year three and still can’t come close to beating x. I believe Brannen had a win.

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X is a 67% free throw shooting team. Tonight they made 85% of their 26 attempts. If they made their season average they would have had 5 fewer points, which accounts for their entire margin of victory, and that has nothing to do with our defense.

X is a 33% three point shooting team, but they made 47% tonight. That's another 6 to 9 points. We could have done a much better job guarding Olivari, but the fact remains that he shot way better than normal and made difficult shots. He made 6 threes tonight for the first time since 2021 when he was chucking up 8 per game on average. He's never made 6 on 8 or fewer attempts like he did tonight. That's not normal. And he's a career 75% free throw shooter who went 9 for 9.

The point is that shooting varies wildly over the course of a season, but for whatever reason X always gets hot against us. Our defense outside of Olivari was really good. Xavier was under 40% inside the arc, where we made 53%. Those numbers have less to do with luck.

We went on the road and lost to by 5 to a team that made almost 50% from three. It sucks and we should have made some coaching adjustment to take their best player away. But I think it's clear that we're the better overall basketball team.

sedziobs said:

X is a 67% free throw shooting team. Tonight they made 85% of their 26 attempts. If they made their season average they would have had 5 fewer points, which accounts for their entire margin of victory, and that has nothing to do with our defense.

X is a 33% three point shooting team, but they made 47% tonight. That's another 6 to 9 points. We could have done a much better job guarding Olivari, but the fact remains that he shot way better than normal and made difficult shots. He made 6 threes tonight for the first time since 2021 when he was chucking up 8 per game on average. He's never made 6 on 8 or fewer attempts like he did tonight. That's not normal. And he's a career 75% free throw shooter who went 9 for 9.

The point is that shooting varies wildly over the course of a season, but for whatever reason X always gets hot against us. Our defense outside of Olivari was really good. Xavier was under 40% inside the arc, where we made 53%. Those numbers have less to do with luck.

We went on the road and lost to by 5 to a team that made almost 50% from three. It sucks and we should have made some coaching adjustment to take their best player away. But I think it's clear that we're the better overall basketball team.

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Ok so they came to play and uc didn’t… again. I don’t take moral victory’s as serious as wins/losses. They were the better team. Better coached and prepared. We still have an unproven coach who has never won a big game. The results don’t like - 1 win out of the last six games and 8 wins out of the last 27 or something.

Bcatfollower said:

Ok so they came to play and uc didn’t… again. I don’t take moral victory’s as serious as wins/losses. They were the better team. Better coached and prepared. We still have an unproven coach who has never won a big game. The results don’t like - 1 win out of the last six games and 8 wins out of the last 27 or something.

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I don't buy that they were better coached. We beat them down the court constantly. They let 6'9 Ody Oguama walk down the lane for a dunk. They didn't make any adjustments to keep Newman out of the lane. They couldn't get anything going inside, rarely doing anything to pull Aziz out of the lane. They got outrebounded and wildly outscored in the paint. They just got bailed out by two hot shooters. You want to give Sean Miller credit for that?