An 11 seed comes into the NCAA tournament as an underdog right from the round of 64. Xavier had only gotten as far as the Elite Eight. They had never been to the final four, much less even sniffed the championship, but here they are, staring down Gonzaga, who also coincidentally has also never been past the elite eight, for a trip to the Final Four. So what led Xavier to this point?
Xavier has always been a tournament mainstay, they had missed it only twice since 2000 and made it as far as the Sweet 16 two years ago. So why were they as far down as an 11 seed to start with?
To begin with, they lost their veteran leader, Myles Davis, for the season in January due to a suspension. The Musketeers also lost their number two scoring option and leader in assists in point guard Edmond Sumner in late January after an ACL tear. He was their second option right behind star Trevon Bluiett along with being their primary ball handler and distributor.
These issues compounded and suddenly, Xavier was staring down a six-game losing streak to end their regular season. On top of that, every one of those losses were to eventual tournament teams. In fact, they likely would have been a NIT team were it not for their win against Butler in the Big East Tournament.
Xavier came into the tournament with all these problems, but they became a different team. At halftime in their round of 64 game against No. 6 Maryland, they trailed by one point and looked every bit the lackluster team they were in the regular season. After halftime, they turned on the jets and easily moved on with an 11 point win.
They absolutely crushed three seed Florida State in the second round 91-66. Their star Trevon Bluiett has been playing out of this world, destroying Florida State to the tune of 29 points on eight of 14 shooting. High scoring and efficiency has been his calling card so far in this tournament.
Then, in their most surprising game yet, they looked ready to bow out in the Sweet 16 to No. 2 Arizona. Down by seven points with under three minutes to go, it looked like they needed a miracle to move on to the next round, so what do you think they did? They just ended the last 160 seconds of the game with a 9-0 run to clinch their trip to the Elite 8. It only gets better from here so hats off to Xavier for a brilliant tournament run.
