For Chris Mack and Xavier basketball, fight’s aftermath still lingers


Mark Weber/AP
“In a sense we’ve had to start all over,” Xavier Coach Chris Mack said of the aftermath of his team’s brawl with rival Cincinnati in December

By John Feinstein, Published: February 4

Chris Mack stood gingerly in a hallway late Wednesday night in the basement of George Washington’s Smith Center, looking as if he had just been put through a ringer.

In a tangible sense, he had been. His Xavier team had trailed GW for most of the night before a jump shot by Tu Holloway rolled around the rim and in, allowing the Musketeers to escape with a 59-58 victory. “Any win on the road is a good win,” Mack had said moments earlier during his postgame session with reporters. “Winning on the road in college basketball is never easy.”

These days, a win on the road is a day at the beach for Mack and his players compared with what the last eight weeks have been like. Almost in the blink of an eye, Xavier went from a team ranked eighth in the country, one of those college basketball stories that people point to as proof that you can do things right and still succeed on the national stage, to a team and a school ripped and reviled almost everywhere it went.

“In today’s world, where you can get information on your phone in a matter of minutes, there’s almost no way for the kids to escape it,” Mack said. “I watch a lot of games on TV and I see players woofing all the time and it’s just part of the game. Right now, our kids can’t do anything like that no matter what happens. We’re under a microscope. We all know it.”

Life at Xavier changed on Dec. 10 at the end of what should have been a day of celebration on the 7,000-student campus in Cincinnati. That afternoon, the Musketeers crushed Cincinnati, their crosstown arch rival, 76-53 in a game that was never really a contest. The victory gave them an 8-0 record that included wins over Georgia and Purdue at home and road victories over Butler and Vanderbilt.

At that moment, the case could be made that no one in the country had a more impressive early-season résumé than the Musketeers.

That all went flying out the windows of Cintas Center in the game’s final minute. The game had been physical and full of trash-talking all day, as Xavier-Cincinnati games tend to be. It got ugly at the end and a benches-clearing brawl broke out that led to eight players — four from each team — being suspended after officials declared the game over with 9.7 seconds to go.

The fight began when Holloway began pushing and shoving with Cincinnati’s Ge’Lawn Guyn. It escalated almost instantly and ended only after Bearcats center Yancy Gates had decked and bloodied Xavier center Kenny Frease.

It got worse for Xavier after that. Mack sent Holloway and point guard Mark Lyons into the interview room to represent his team. They were, to put it mildly, unapologetic about the fight.

“We’ve got a whole bunch of gangsters in the locker room,” said Holloway, an Associated Press third-team all-American last season. “Not thugs, but tough guys on the court. And we went out there and zipped them up at the end of the game.”

Mack has said repeatedly since then that Holloway was using the term “gangster” only in reference to the intensity Xavier brings to the court. The “zipped them up” reference — as in a bodybag — may be tougher to explain.

“By the time I got a chance to talk to Tu on Sunday he knew he’d made a mistake,” Mack said. “He’s a smart kid. He didn’t need any lessons from Coach Mack at that point. This is a good kid who is going to graduate on time, who works hard and goes to church every Sunday. He’s learned a tough lesson from all this.”

Mack smiled wanly. “We’ve all learned tough lessons from this. I think all our guys probably learned more in three weeks than they’ll learn in four years of college.”

One lesson they learned is that one less-than-shining moment can change your reputation 180 degrees overnight. Mack suspended Holloway for one game — pointing out that he never actually threw a punch during the fight — Lyons for two games and Dez Wells and walk-on Landen Amos for four games.

Xavier played Oral Roberts eight days after the fight without Holloway and lost, 64-42. From there it went to Hawaii and lost twice more. All four players have been back since the game against Gonzaga on New Year’s Eve (a 72-65 loss), but Xavier has continued to wobble. The win over George Washington made the Musketeers 7-7 since their season and their lives changed.

“In a sense we’ve had to start all over,” Mack said. “It wasn’t just missing key guys against tough opponents, it was everything that was going on around us. You can’t ignore it, you can’t pretend it isn’t there. It’s there.”

Even now, in February, it is there. Mack is still clearly wary about how much Holloway talks to reporters. Even though he scored a game-high 21 points including the winning basket Wednesday, he wasn’t available after the game.

“His parents are here,” Mack explained. “He wanted to go see them.”

It isn’t just that, he admitted: “We have limited him because every time he does an interview the fight comes up. It’s the same questions over and over again.”

Xavier’s basketball tradition is a shiny one. It has been in the NCAA tournament 10 of the last 11 seasons and reached the Elite Eight in 2004 under Thad Matta and 2009 under Sean Miller. Mack, who played for Pete Gillen at the school and graduated in 1992, took the team to the Sweet 16 in 2010 and had a 50-17 record his first two seasons.

Late Wednesday, he looked like anything but a hot young coach, even after a road win. He was limping because he tore a patella tendon in his knee during practice on Jan. 6 and had surgery two days later. A case of pink-eye didn’t help either. In December, his team appeared likely to be no worse than a top four seed on Selection Sunday. Now it sits squarely on the bubble, a situation Mack is almost certain wouldn’t exist if the fight hadn’t happened.

“No way would I have thought we’d be where we are before that day happened,” he said. “We still had some work to do on offense but we were monsters on defense. We haven’t gotten that back.”

He smiled when the question of when he and his players might put all this behind them came up. “If we were 22-0 right now this would have been over week ago,” he said. “But we’re not. Everyone loves winners.”

As he hobbled up the steps and into the night on Wednesday, it was apparent that all that winning didn’t make him feel especially loved right now.

For John Feinstein’s previous columns, go to washingtonpost.com/feinstein. More more by the author, visit his blog at http://www.feinsteinonthebrink.com.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/for...tml?sub=AR

Xavier sucks for removing the potential for a not-so-terrible loss from UC's resume.

(02-05-2012 02:08 PM)Coopdaddy67 Wrote:  Xavier sucks for removing the potential for a not-so-terrible loss from UC's resume.

It wasn't a bad loss. XU's RPI is much higher than UC's and will stay that way regardless of the rest of the season. It will be an RPI Top 100 loss worst case.

If mack fails to get them to the NCAA this year, I think he'll be setting himself up for a short tenure. Next year, there's a good chance Lyons is gone, Holloway, Walker and Frease are for sure gone. He's going to have an uphill climb. Other than Dez Wells, nobody he's recruited, has been very good.

I still believe issues with X in terms of player character and team chemistry were bubbling up below the surface prior to the brawl when it all boiled over. It's likely some incident would have happened before the season was over anyway. Institutionally, X made very bad decisions beginning with the press conference, short suspensions and ambiguous statements about the incident. It was compounded by their "on again, off again" mandatory session for students that they announced publicly before surrendering to student/fan pressure. Bottom line: X didn't look anything like the "big-time" program they aspire to be.

Mack is still giving them a pass in my opinion when he makes statements like this:

Quote: “I watch a lot of games on TV and I see players woofing all the time and it’s just part of the game. Right now, our kids can’t do anything like that no matter what happens. We’re under a microscope. We all know it.”

Clown. He was a punk when he played, so it makes sense.

I watch a lot of games and I don't see the same things Mack is talking about. Even if everyone else is running their mouth there's no reason for Mack to be playing the victim card. Comments like this prevent his team from getting over it, they need to take ownership that their actions were over the top before they'll be over it.

When a ban on smack talking alters your game plan you obviously aren't a very good coach.

I watch alot of bball and not once seen the level of jawing his team had displayed. Have never seen players going after the opposing team's fans/media representatives. You never see that type of behavior in the BE, B10, ACC.

Sounds as if he is already beginning to provide his team with an excuse for their poor play.

If Xavier's smack talk was the same thing everyone else was doing I don't think Matt Painter and others would have felt the need to talk about it after our brawl.

(02-06-2012 11:13 AM)bearcatmill Wrote:  I watch alot of bball and not once seen the level of jawing his team had displayed. Have never seen players going after the opposing team's fans/media representatives. You never see that type of behavior in the BE, B10, ACC.

Sounds as if he is already beginning to provide his team with an excuse for their poor play.

He has to offer them some excuse for their poor play, otherwise the blame may fall at his poor coaching/management skills.

Still lingering. Last I checked Temple was thumping X, 56-36 with about 15 mins left in the game.

Too much Moore in Temple's win against Xavier
Guard puts up 30 on Muskies in 85-72 win


Eric Hartline-US PRESSWIRE
Temple guard Khalif Wyatt and Xavier guard Mark Lyons battle for a loose ball during the first half.

Written by
Shannon Russell

PHILADELPHIA – Now Xavier has to rely on other Atlantic 10 teams to help it contend for a regular-season title.

By falling to league-leader Temple 85-72 Saturday at the Liacouras Center, the Musketeers (16-9, 7-4 A-10) dropped a game and a half behind the Owls (19-5, 8-2) in the standings and fell one game behind second-place Saint Louis.

The five-time defending A-10 regular-season champion Muskies must win out the rest of their conference slate and hope their lesser-ranked peers knock off the top teams for a shot at sixth title.

“We didn’t come ready to play,” XU forward Andre Walker said. “We all played soft, guards and bigs. I don’t know why. But we acted like we didn’t want to be there, and that’s got to change.”

Tu Holloway led Xavier with 23 points, Mark Lyons added 15 and Dez Wells added 11.

Xavier’s defense had no answer for conference scoring leader Ramone Moore, who finished with 30 points, or second-leading A-10 scorer Khalif Wyatt, who had 18.

Micheal Eric added 11 points and a team-best 16 rebounds.

Temple played every bit like a team with a lead on the line, attacking a flat Xavier team that never recovered. The Muskies surrendered a season-high 47 first-half points and the Owls hung on for an eighth straight victory.

“Xavier’s always been led by its oldest players, its seniors. Our lack of leadership at this point in the year, at this point of this careers is startling,” coach Chris Mack said. “It starts and end with our seniors.

“I can’t expect Dez Wells and Justin Martin and Dee Davis to rally the troops, to tell guys what it’s like to play at Temple, what it’s like to be ready to play in an atmosphere like this.”

The game was decided early, and Xavier’s second-half surge wasn’t enough to sway the outcome. After Holloway knotted the game at five with a 3-pointer, Temple held Xavier scoreless for the next 7:08.

The Owls reeled off 16 straight points, converting baskets after several of the Muskies eight first-half turnover and capitalizing on XU’s porous defense.

Mack said turnovers, poor defensive rebounding and an inability to defend without foulding crushed Xavier’s opportunity to compete for first place in the conference.

“We turned the ball over so many times in the first 10 minutes. Leads to 14 points. You can’t defend,” Mack said. “We were so loosey goosey with the basketball. You can’t win that way.”

When Eric wasn’t converting weak-side stickbacks, Wyatt and Moore were piling up points along the perimeter. The duo combined for six of Temple’s seven treys before the break – against a Xavier team that boasted the A-10’s top perimeter defense entering the contest.

Not much seemed to go right for a Musketeers team that trailed by as many as 20 before halftime. Lyons came off the bench, turned over the ball twice, missed three of his first four baskets, and committed his second foul by the 11:35 mark.

Kenny Frease went 0-for-5 by the half. Wells missed the only shot he attempted.
The Muskies scored the first four points of the second half before Holloway committed consecutive turnovers and the Owls mounted a 7-0 run.

Xavier chipped away at the lead behind Wells, who made three of his first four shots of the second half, including a pair of 3-pointers.

Lyons’ 3-pointer narrowed Temple’s lead to 13 points with 12:22 to play but the Owls stretched it to 18 by making free throws and field goals, including a wide-open 3-pointer by T.J. DiLeo.

After Temple’s field goal shooting went for nearly eight minutes, Xavier narrowed the gap to nine points on a Holloway free throw with 1:06 remaining. It pulled no closer.

Temple could have been another signature win for the Muskies, as the Owls entered the contest ranked 21st in the RPI. But Xavier lost a second game in three outings and was thwarted in its bid to beat Temple on its home court for the first since 2004.

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20120...eakingnews

These gangstas aren't very good at sports.

Temple is simply better then X

Currently losing at UMass in the second half.

UMass 75
Xavier 65

Less than 2 minutes.

Xavier will fall to 17-10, and 8-5 in the A-10.

77-71 UMass still up after 2 UMass FT's, and a three pointer by Holloway, and then a 3 pointer by Lyons.

.25 seconds left. UMass will get the ball after a Xavier timeout.

UMass makes 1 of 2 FT's, 78-71. Lyons makes layup, 78-73, Holloway immediately fouls with .10 seconds left.

......and my internet connection disappears and I don't know what happened.

80-73 UMass wins.

Hide the water fountains.