Xavier's Perception

I find it interesting sometimes that Xavier’s perception locally is not nearly as favorable as their perception nationally. 

I'm not sure if it’s the fact that Cincinnati is still a major league town first or the fact that U.C. at the end of the day has a much larger following due to size, but for some reason many people here still don’t want to acknowledge what Xavier has become—a big-time national ‘high major’ program. 

Take the game at LSU over the weekend for example; it was the Tigers first sell-out of the season and their largest home crowd since 2006.  This is a program that was in the Final Four two years ago and having Xavier come to town in January was their biggest game of their year to date. 

Fact is that when any team sees Xavier on their schedule they will instantly be pointing to that game as being one of the biggest of their season. As mentioned in this spot before, Nike has deemed Xavier one of their ‘elite’ programs for next season and the Muskies will be sporting Nike’s top threads. 

When I still hear Xavier haters around town try to use the "small" or mid-major argument, it’s almost embarrassing for the person making the claim because it is so ignorantly laughable. 

It is obvious that there are just some people in Cincinnati that are big school apologists and can’t handle the fact that tiny Jesuit Xavier has not only has been crashing their party but are becoming the life of that party as well.

So, that was a good win for the Muskies—going into such a hostile environment and polishing off an 80-70 win has definitely given me renewed hope that this version of Xavier may be more ready come March than I thought to make another deep run.

It’s not that I expected this to be a rebuilding year or anything but with all the new and young players being introduced, I really consider this success to be exceeding expectations during a year I would have been willing to give a pass on.

Obviously, next year’s Xavier’s squad could be a mainstay in the top 10 all year long. 

After playing three of four on the road it’s now three straight at home for the Muskies, who are riding an eight game winning streak. 

First up is Charlotte on Wednesday night. This leads me to my question of the week: Who will draw more fans Wednesday night?  U.C. is at home against Georgetown and Xavier hosts Charlotte.  Expect the Xavier game to be a sell-out—10,250. 

So the real question is: Can U.C. draw more than that for their Big East showdown with the Hoyas?  The Bearcats largest home crowd of the season was—of course—Xavier.  Their second largest crowd was when they hosted UConn which was in the 9,000 range. 

U.C. is averaging a little over 6,000 a game so it would mean they would have to get 4,000 over their average to draw more than Xavier will.

The U.C. game is been aired on ESPN360 which is some sort of internet channel which nobody in Cincinnati can get due to contractual disputes—that fact should help them because the only way to see this game will be to buy a ticket or go to Kentucky.

Regardless, my money says they’ll get a similar draw as they did for UConn—around 9,000.  Still that means around 20,000 people will be attending college basketball games in this town on Wednesday night, which isn’t bad considering nobody around here is interested in college hoops anymore.