-Matt Cox

Key Returners: Naji Marshall, Paul Scruggs, Quentin Goodin, Tyrique Jones
Key Losses: Ryan Welage, Zach Hankins, Kyle Castlin
Key Newcomers: Jason Carter, Bryce Moore, KyKy Tandy, Dahmir Bishop, Zach Freemantle, Daniel Ramsey

Lineup:

Outlook: 'Twas a tale of two seasons for the X-Men last year. The early hiccups generated some angst among the Xavier faithful, as first year head honcho Travis Steele struggled to find his footing while Chris Mack worked minor miracles at Louisville. But by mid-February, it all came together for the man who bumped shoulders with Mack for 10 years as an understudy to one of the sharpest coaching minds in the game. I’ll admit I had my own doubts about Steele’s coaching chops (bear in mind last year was his first season ever as a head coach), but shame on me for rushing to judgment on a guy groomed in the one of the most prestigious coaching pipelines in all of college basketball. What the Musketeers showed from Valentines’s Day until the end of the season is a sneak preview at what we should expect in 2019-20, a team with an established core crop of talent that simply needs to fill in some minor blanks around the edges.

The tone of this preview would sound a lot more bearish had the veteran foursome of Naji Marshall, Paul Scruggs, Quentin Goodin and Tyrique Jones chose to stay in the draft – thankfully, much to the pleasure of Travis Steele and Xavier fans everywhere, all four opted to return to Cincinnati for another bite at the apple in 2020. This veteran quartet accounted for 50 points a game last season, to go along with 23 rebounds, 12 assists, 4 steals and 2 blocks a contest.

Having such a solid foundation of production intact will pay big dividends, especially early on in the season, but I’m particularly fond of the way Scruggs and Goodin have molded into a yin and yang pairing on the perimeter. Both Scruggs and Goodin entered school with the “point guard” label slapped on their back, but over the past two seasons, Goodin has carved out his niche as the primary facilitator, which paved the way for Scruggs to blossom into more of an attack-minded scorer. While their skillsets are fairly similar in nature, their individual evolutions have molded them into a more effective duet in the backcourt.

At times last year, Scruggs was Xavier’s most reliable and most efficient scoring option, as Naji Marshall struggled mightily assimilating to his new role as offensive alpha dog. Granted, Marshall deserves some forgiveness for his volatile play. He was banged up on multiple occasions and asking him to seamlessly fill the shoes of a scoring savant like Trevon Bluiett was a bit unfair. However, those blemishes were wiped away by mid-Feburary and Xavier fans finally got a glimpse of Marshall’s limitless ceiling for the final month of the season. After a 6-game losing streak dropped the Musketeers to 4-8 in league play (and 11-13 overall), Marshall was the defibrillator that resurrected the X-Men’s season. In a thrilling 64-61 overtime win over Creighton on February 13th, Marshall paced the Muskies with 23 points, 7 boards and 5 assists, marking the first of six near flawless performances in a row.

During that run, it appeared the nagging back pain that had hampered him all season had finally subsided and Marshall promptly morphed into a stat sheet stuffer. Unsurprisingly, this coincided with Xavier righting the ship to the tune of a 5-game win stream before Marshall missed the regular season finale against St. John’s.

Obviously the 6-game window is a small sample, but it’s worth highlighting because it’s one of the few segments of the season when Marshall was fully healthy.

Marshall’s resurgence clearly rubbed off on the other side of the ball as well, as Xavier’s defense suddenly became an impenetrable shield when the calendar turned to February. This stat from Xavier’s SB Nation affiliate site, Banners on the Parkway, contextualizes just how much the Musketeers’ defense improved down the stretch.

The team that Travis Steele had said could be one of Xavier’s best ever finished the season on an 11 game run with a defensive efficiency of 93.2, a number that would have been good for 17th in the nation over the course of a season. From nearly 200th in the nation in defense, they climbed to finish 102nd. Over the last ten games of the season, they were better on defense than even Virginia.

The inability to get stops early on was a bit perplexing, given that Steele stayed true to his former boss’ pack-line defensive principles, so the transition period should’ve been frictionless. Steele did mix-up defenses on occasion, sprinkling in some zone that looked something like a hybrid 2-3 and 1-2-2 scheme, but he ultimately didn’t deviate much from Mack’s defensive archetype. Replacing Zach Hankins up front will sting, who was not only a steady low-post scoring option offensively but a feared intimidator at the rim defensively. As much as I’ve raved about Tyrique Jones for multiple years now, Steele clearly favored Hankins as the primary big alongside either Ryan Welage or Naji Marshall at the other forward spot last year, which points to how effective Hankins was as a defensive barricade inside.

The 2019-20 front court will feature Jones in a more prominent role and Ohio grad transfer Jason Carter as a hybrid replacement for Welage and Hankins. Early in his career at Ohio, Carter did the bulk of his damage in the paint, but has since expanded his offensive repertoire into a more versatile inside-out scorer. With a newfound long range shooting stroke (Carter shot 40% from 3 in conference play last season), he’ll bring a little bit of Hankins’ low-post scoring prowess and Welage’s outside shooting touch to the table. Carter will be joined by another experienced newcomer this season in Western Michigan transfer Bryce Moore, a long range marksmen who should help cure Xavier’s 3-point shooting futility last season.

Few teams in the country have a surplus of both returning veteran producers and incoming freshman talent, but Xavier is on that shortlist. The two most prized possessions of the 2019 recruiting class, KyKy Tandy and Dahmir Bishop, will bolster an already stout backcourt core and take on some of the heavy scoring load shared by Goodin, Scruggs and Marshall last season. Zach Freemantle and Daniel Ramsey, both top-150 prospects, will provide additional support up front, which means the 2019-20 depth chart could go as a many as 10 deep on a nightly basis. This also bodes well for Steele’s desire to ramp up the tempo this year, which was on full display in Xavier’s recent expedition to Spain.

Bottom Line: This sets up to be a breakthrough season for Travis Steele in just his second season calling the shots. The awkward handoff from Mack to Steele is now in the rear view mirror, which clearly played a part in last year’s rocky start to the season. If what we witnessed over the final month of the year is an indicator of what’s to come in 2019-20, the X-Men will be gunning for a Big East championship come March.