PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island – The brutality of the Big East Conference was on full display Saturday at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center, and Xavier basketball was on the bad end of the result this time.
The No. 5 Musketeers dropped their first Big East game of the year, losing 81-72 to the Providence College Friars before a lively capacity crowd of 12,630.
Xavier (15-2, 3-1 Big East) played a sloppy first half and let Providence and its fans find a foothold in the contest early. It was one of several recent games in which Xavier was slow out of the gates and made matters unnecessarily difficult for itself via turnovers, of which there were 10 in the first half and 21 by game's end.
Those errors were more than enough of an opening for the Friars to take the game. The hosts played a desperate brand of basketball after blowing a late lead Wednesday against Marquette and eventually losing the game to fall to below .500 in the Big East.
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"The ups and downs of the Big East. It's a great conference," Providence head coach Ed Cooley said. "I thought we played a great team today. One of the best teams in the country, if not the best team in the country in Xavier... I thought our kids met the challenge today. I thought our preparation was great. Our players were dialed in. We made our free-throws down the stretch to seal the win but very happy with the way our guys played."
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The Musketeers self-corrected in the second half to some extent but not to the degree necessary to pull the game out.
Senior guard Trevon Bluiett was held scoreless for the entire second half. He finished the day with 12 points on 4 of 13 shooting.
Senior guard J.P. Macura’s impact was also mitigated by the Friars (11-6, 2-2 Big East). Macura scored nine points on the afternoon and four in the second half.
Xavier centers Tyrique Jones (12 points), a sophomore, and Kerem Kanter (24 points), a graduate transfer, picked up some of the slack, but not enough. Not when Providence had the kind of balanced attack pundits forecasted the Friars would display on a nightly basis in league play.
Kyron Cartwright scored a team-high 19 points while Isaiah Jackson had 18 and Rodney Bullock, after missing the Friars' loss to Marquette (flu), had 17 points.
Xavier went to halftime trailing by eight points and quickly halved the deficit in the second half but was unable to further cut the margin.
"Well, it certainly wasn't our day," Xavier head coach Chris Mack said afterward. "You give those guys a lot of credit. That's not easy when (Providence) drop a home game and turn around and play another team within 48 hours, but so is the Big East and so is our league, so we have to be able to turn the page.
"I thought our inability to handle the ball in the first half really put us behind the eight ball. The turnovers that we had, and Providence created some of them, we've got to be more sure-handed and better to start possessions... I thought we were doing a decent job out of halftime."
THREE REASONS XAVIER LOST
• A bad first half laid the groundwork for the Musketeers’ to chase the game for almost the entire contest. Xavier's inside-out game over the opening 20 minutes was lacking as the frontcourt was rendered ineffective around the rim and made uncomfortable by Providence's bigs. Xavier's bigs adjusted somewhat for the second half. Before they corrected course, though, Xavier found itself down by eight points at the half. They never got closer than four points the rest of the way.
PC had 19 points off turnovers. Ten of those came in the first half.
"We've had a lot of games where we go 10 turnovers in the first half," Mack said. "Obviously my fault. Gotta figure out something."
• When Trevon Bluiett is held scoreless for any extended period of time, you're odds of winning decrease significantly. Sure, the Musketeers have other weapons but don't kid yourself in that this is and will always be a Bluiett-driven team (at least when they're at their best). Then, for Bluiett and Macura to combine for only four points over the final 20 minutes, well, that's never going to work on the road in this conference.
• Xavier found a game that worked late too late and even that was far from perfect. After being stymied around the rim via six blocks in the first half, it was Jones and Kanter that found much greater success underneath in the second half. But by then the Musketeers were firmly in catch-up mode. And the Xavier deficit was exacerbated by the fact that the Musketeers put Providence in the bonus with more than 13 minutes to play in the second half. The Friars finished the night 20 of 22 from the foul line.
THE CONSEQUENCES
Defeats in conference play are a given, and that’s doubly true in the ultra-competitive Big East, so Xavier losing on the road to a Providence team that’s better than its record indicated is nothing to feel too sorry about.
Xavier doesn't need to overhaul its approach. Like Mack said, it just wasn't their day. A loss doesn't have to necessarily mean more than that.
It is an unfortunate loss in the sense that Xavier was within touching distance of a couple nice pieces of program history. A win would have seen Mack tie former Xavier coach Pete Gillen for the program’s all-time lead in wins with 202. The record-tying win will now have to come another day.
A win would have made No. 5 Xavier a virtual lock to move up to a program-best No. 4 ranking in the Associated Press poll next week after current No. 4 Arizona State lost earlier this week.
WHAT'S NEXT
The road forward doesn't get any easier for Xavier as they'll now turn to a Wednesday visit to defending conference champion Villanova in Philadelphia's Wells Fargo Center.