Xavier is the underdog you shouldn't count out in this NCAA tournament

ORLANDO, Fla. — Lil Uzi Vert’s “Do What I Want” blared from the speakers in the Xavier locker room, rattling the walls and setting off a four-man singalong around Trevon Bluiett as the junior guard cut his tape from his ankles following the team’s 91-66 win over Florida State Saturday night.

If you didn’t know better, you’d think the 11th-seeded Musketeers were celebrating a national title in the bowels of the Amway Center, rather than the team’s second trip to the Sweet 16 in the past three seasons.

Considering how dominant Xavier looked in dispatching the No. 3 seed Seminoles, however, it may be fair to wonder whether an even more raucous reception could still lie ahead.

“We’re celebrating right now, and we’re going to rest a little bit, but we know the bigger picture,” Bluiett told FOX Sports after the chorus had subsided. “We know that this isn’t the finish line. And I think the guys do a good job kind of turning the next page.

“Mentally, I think we’re kind of old,” continued Bluiett, who scored a game-high 29 points — the second-highest output of his career — in the win. “We’ve got a lot of freshmen, but they think like seniors. They know that this isn’t the end.”

If nothing else, it was a markedly different scene than the one that consumed the Xavier locker room this time last year in St. Louis. Coming off a 27-5 regular season that saw the Musketeers ranked as high as fifth in the country, Xavier, at the time a 2-seed, entered the 2016 tournament with legitimate national championship aspirations.

Instead, those hopes came crashing down in a second-round loss to Wisconsin at the Scottrade Center, a devastating blow to the program.

“I’ve been to 17 NCAA tournaments as a player, assistant coach and head coach — maybe more — and it's a hard deal to take off that uniform for the last time or address your team for the last time,” Xavier coach Chris Mack recalled after Saturday’s win. “But that was the worst locker room that I'd ever been in.

“We had a special year, and it ended quite suddenly, and I think our guys that were a part of that team really remember that,” Mack continued. “I think there's some desperation we play with because of that feeling.”

Still, it’s unlikely that many outside of Cincinnati saw Xavier advancing past the opening weekend this year — not considering all the hard luck the team has overcome since last season’s early exit.

The team’s expectations — from the outside, anyway — first took a hit last summer, when Jalen Reynolds decided to forego his senior season to join the professional ranks. Reserves Larry Austin and Makinde London then transferred to Vanderbilt and Chattanooga, respectively, and Myles Davis, the team’s second-leading returning scorer, was suspended indefinitely in September.

After a 15-game absence, Davis returned to the floor in January, but after failing to register a basket in three games — all losses — he abruptly left the program. Two weeks later, the team also lost its starting point guard, Edmond Sumner, to a torn ACL, undoubtedly the most significant setback of the bunch, as a six-game losing streak soon followed.

 

As a result, Xavier was wildly inconsistent for most of the season, and there’s a case to be made that it wouldn’t even be in the field if not for a strong showing at the Big East tournament, which saw it advance to the conference semifinal thanks to a win over Butler.

Yet here the Musketeers are, at 23-13 and the lowest remaining seed in the field, four wins from a national title and looking ahead to a Thursday matchup with No. 2 seed Arizona.

“I told them out in the real world life is going to hand you lemons, and you can pout about it or figure out how to make lemonade,” Mack said. “Our guys, despite all the adversity they've been hit with and the social media that tells them how bad they are and how poor they are, they stayed with it, and they believed in themselves and our coaching staff.”

What remains to be seen is whether any amount of belief will be enough to carry Xavier to a historic and unlikely national championship.

 

That’s not to say the Musketeers aren’t an excellent team. They can be, and when they play like they did against Florida State — knocking down 3s, playing stingy defense and taking care of the ball — they’re capable of beating anyone in the country. But only three No. 11 seeds in history have ever reached the Final Four and none have won. So why would Xavier be the first?

Maybe the better question is why not?

“We never pay attention to the seeding,” Bluiett said. “We knew at the beginning, us being an 11-seed, I just felt like it was a placement. I didn’t look at it like, ‘Oh, this team is better.’ We don’t let the number in front of the name get to us. We just go out there and know we’re going to play for 40 minutes, and that’s what matters.”

That narrow approach is one Mack has been preaching all season — and throughout the tournament’s opening weekend.

“We try to compartmentalize everything we do,” Mack told FOX Sports in the locker room after Saturday’s win. “So for instance, in the game, we don’t talk about the 40-minute result. We worry about winning the four-minute wars (between media timeouts).

 

“Same thing, when we came down here we told our guys it’s a four-team, two-game tournament, and we called it the Orlando Invitational,” he continued. “It’s Florida Gulf Coast, Florida State, Xavier and Maryland, and we’ve got to win two games. We don’t have to be better than the other 64 teams in the field; we have to be better than the two we play down here.”

Now another four-team tournament awaits this week in San Jose, with Gonzaga and West Virginia rounding out the field. And with any luck, Xavier will soon look back on Saturday’s locker-room karaoke session as the first of three.

“We’re just peaking at the right time,” Bluiett said. “We’re 30, 35 games in, so we know how to play with each other. It was just a matter of focusing and buying in.

“I’m happy for them,” Mack added, the bass still thumping in the background. “I’m excited for those guys because I know that they’ll remember that locker room when we came in here for the rest of their life. And that’s what this tournament is all about.”

You can follow Sam Gardner on Twitter or email him at samgardnerfox@gmail.com.