by Randy Hill

Updated: March 28, 2008, 12:48 AM EST 12 comments

add this RSS blog email print

And prickly can be fun. It also can be relatively tidy, which attempts to explain how Xavier and West Virginia combined for 46 very personal fouls in Thursday's West Regional Sweet 16 party, but checked in with a reasonable 20 turnovers.

There's much to be said for a rumble that maintains proper etiquette.

"Well, obviously, anyone who watched the game here tonight saw a phenomenal game," said Sean Miller, head coach of third-seeded Xavier and a guy who could be generous in these assessments because his Musketeers escaped with a 79-75 overtime victory.

"But you needed a little luck when it is this tight with so much at stake, and a couple balls bounced our way."

Yeah, there was considerable bouncing around in an event that might be classified as MMMA (March Madness martial arts), with Miller's Xavier crew and Bob Huggins' Mountaineers going at it full-contact style.

By grinding into the Elite Eight, the Musketeers set quite a stage for their showdown with No. 1 seed UCLA, which downed Western Kentucky 88-78 and usually behaves as defensively as a couple of scorned Little League parents. Going through the Bruins to reach the Final Four won't be a physical cakewalk.

OK, so Xavier-West Virginia wasn't poetry, either, but it was relentlessly compelling, sort of like a mugging taking place on a roller-coaster. The Musketeers opened the game with a 21-7 salvo, provoking Huggins to probe the depths of his bench for immediate solutions.

Actually, the impetus for his rally was located within the orchestrated flow of West Virginia's new motion offense. After demonstrating little patience early (abetted by woeful screens, with mediocre player and ball movement), the Mountaineers settled in.

It also helped that Miller's Musketeers routinely refused to switch on off-ball screens. The philosophy enabled the Mounties to score on impromptu baseline "Flex" screens and basket cuts off down-screen curls.

"We knew West Virginia would come back," Miller said of the Mounties. "You know, teams have the ability to fight back, and West Virginia played a lot of matchup zone."

West Virginia also played a lot of man-to-man defense, choosing to slide under the high ball-screen offensive tactics of Xavier point guard Drew Lavender and post guy Josh Duncan. Lavender responded by knocking in a trio of 3-pointers when he wasn't slipping into the lane to temporarily wreck the Mounties defense with seven dimes.

Duncan, an inside-out threat who finished with a game-high 26 points and 10 rebounds, managed to survive until the end after earning his fourth foul with 12:31 left in regulation.

The Mountaineers weren't quite as fortunate, losing a four-point lead and hotshot Joe Alexander (18 points, 10 rebounds) early in the overtime fight. Alexander, who has developed into a nasty customer the last month or so, had enough defensive company to require 18 field-goal attempts in scoring those 18 points. After he left for good, West Virginia was doomed to shaky decisions and bad free-throw shooting.

Xavier's overtime uprising was also assisted by a couple of timely 3-pointers from J.R. Raymond, who added a layup during that OT span and finished with grand total of (drum roll here) eight points.

One of those killer 3s occurred off an out-of-bounds play with two seconds left on the shot clock and a back screen-lob play to Duncan blown up by the Mounties.

"The play was actually to give Josh a lob," Raymond said, "but my man kind of dropped off on him to take away the lob. I kind of squeaked out behind the 3 and Stan (teammate Stanley Burrell) saw me and made a great pass.

"I was kind of a non-factor for 40 minutes," said Raymond, who turned into the, well, X-factor.

Things could get a bit trickier for Xavier and all of its factors on Saturday, when the Musketeers deal with top-seeded UCLA and freshman center Kevin Love. Love, whose presence inspired the Western Kentucky pep band to offer "You Give Love a Bad Name" just prior to tip-off, gave the Hilltoppers 29 points and 14 rebounds.

Duncan would make an interesting defensive match for Love, but Miller may attempt to avoid another night of foul issues and rotate several "bigs," including his own Love (Jason) on the Bruins rookie.

Xavier, which does a nice job of providing weak-side lob help against sluggers on the low post, could have greater problems dealing with the UCLA defense.

The aforementioned Lavender-Duncan ball screens, which seem like a staple in the Musketeers offense, may open the door to the defensive wheelhouse of Bruins coach Ben Howland. No team in America jumps ball screens with the inclusiveness and vigor of UCLA, a trigger for quick rotations that (in theory) push offenses out of their comfort zones. But comfort zones should be fairly rare for both teams in the regional finale.

UCLA, which favored a pace that conjured a shot-clock-bleeding, fist-around-the-heart ballad to Western Kentucky's lively polka, coughed the ball up more than expected against the Hilltoppers' full-court pressure. The Bruins, with their powder-blue-collar style thriving on the glistening shore of Tinseltown, didn't seem that comfortable at a quicker tempo.

"Western Kentucky did a great job of speeding the game up in the second half," said Howland, whose team had limited the Hilltoppers to 20 first-half points on 19 percent shooting.

Xavier could try speeding things up to disturb UCLA, but probably won't. While the Musketeers played at the 213th-fastest pace in Division I men's basketball (UCLA is 230th), Western Kentucky made it work because the Hilltoppers always play fast. If anything, they may have waited too long to use defense to initiate their tempo.

Miller's Musketeers will rise or fall playing Xavier basketball, which is not that much unlike UCLA basketball. In Lavender, they present a nice challenge for Bruins point guard Darren Collison, with Burrell prepared to take on either UCLA guard Russell Westbrook or suddenly resurrected swing man Josh Shipp.

Like UCLA, Xavier also has several defensive-minded big plays in its rotation and a stellar coach.

All the Musketeers need now is an answer for Love. It certainly doesn't hurt to line up a guy named Duncan.