By Tim Daniel
(Photo Courtesy of Desmond Fischer of the Xavier Newswire)
Well, the good news is Xavier won the game, right? We had a regular-season game at Cintas Center with fans and they created a home-field advantage. That's good news.
Paul Scruggs lived up to super senior down the stretch making big steals, attacking the basket, and getting to the free-throw line to add to the team's lead. Yes, that was very good.
Colby Jones scored 16 points tonight. Jones also had five rebounds, four assists, and three steals. No one will complain about those numbers. But with these good things Xavier had going for them in their opening night, there were also some bad.
Nate Johnson struggled to shoot the whole game scoring just three points shooting 1/7 from the floor and 1/4 from three. While Xavier showed a willingness to expand their offense and shoot 27 three-pointers through the night, they were only able to knock down eight of those.
The free-throw line was also not very kind to the Musketeers tonight shooting 13/21 from the line. Xavier was much more aggressive as a team fighting to get to the stripe later in the game but weren't able to consistently capitalize on the free shots.
Scruggs and Jones combined for ten of Xavier's 13 assists as a team. They were also the only guys on the team to have more than one.
With all that being said, Niagra gave the Musketeers a bigger fight than the vegas oddsmakers predicted, and Xavier still found a way to fight for the win. Despite all their struggles, they still pulled this one off and they never gave up the lead. Most importantly, through it all Xavier is 1-0.
Up next for the Musketeers, a game Friday at 6:30 against Kent St.
