It's officially Xavier week. Before you check your eyes, yes it's only on ESPN+. If you're trying to watch this one in bar, you better check with them about the streaming stuff.
X is 7-2 coming in. They do have one more game before the shootout vs. Morgan State on 12/10 at 7:00 on CBSSN. The losses were to Michigan on a neutral court and TCU in Ft. Worth. The game in between was a squeaker of a buy game against SC State. Erik Martin's crew played with them the whole game and X won on a late 3.
Zach Freemantle and Jerome Hunter are healthy again. Keeping Freemantle off the boards will be crucial as he's the leading rebounder by far. Ryan Conwell is averaging 16.6 points per game followed by Freemantle and McKnight. No one else on the team averages in double figures. Unless I'm missing something they've got 17 on the bench and have only played 11 guys so far this year and two of those appear to walk ons. There's not a whole lot of height on roster outside of John Hugley IV (remember him?), at 6'11. Hugley doesn't start but could give Bandaogo some trouble if he gets extended minutes as he's a load at 270 lbs. I think the key match-up is likely to be Dailyn Swain vs. whoever he guards (Simas?). Swain is listed as a guard but he's 6'8.
There are three guys on X's roster that we also recruited in Hugley, Swain and Trey Green.
The Bearcats cannot get off to a slow start like the last two games if we're going to win this one. They may not recover, as we've seen in recent Shootouts, and it takes the crowd out of the game.
https://www.espn.com/mens-college-ba...tats/_/id/2752
