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NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MARCH 11: Nigel James Jr. #0 of the Marquette Golden Eagles shoots the ball against Tre Carroll #12 of the Xavier Musketeers during the first half of the 2026 Big East Men's Tournament - First Round game at Madison Square Garden on March 11, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by Ishika Samant/Getty Images) | Getty Images
There was no chance this team was ever going to coast to a Big East Tournament win, was there? There were two possible scripts here: Xavier gets up big and lets the other team back in it. Xavier goes down huge and claws their way back.
Thankfully for all of us, today they chose option one. It doesn’t guarantee a win any more than option two guarantees a loss, but it’s at least a little easier to watch. All Wright (7/1/2) came out hot, but the immediate story was Tre Carroll (18/9/4 and three blocks). Xavier’s talisman was back and back to it early. He scored Xavier’s first four and looked very healthy. Did Richard Pitino throw off in a mostly pointless game on Saturday? Probably not, but Carroll looks reasonably fresh and ready to go.
Xavier built the lead up as Marquette continued to do what they’ve done all year and shot the ball horribly. Really horribly. On the half they shot .385/.250/.600, but even that doesn’t do justice to the initial barrage of misses. Xavier, on the other hand, started out unsustainably hot. Everyone who has watched Xavier this year knew what was coming next, and, like the sun rising in the east and Wes Miller losing big games, it did.
The Golden Eagles hit Xavier with a 15-2 run that came both from them getting hot and X suddenly completely forgetting how to score. The Musketeers scored once in seven trips down the floor. In fact, in the last ten minutes of the first half, Xavier scored just five times. If maybe this was your first exposure to the game or you hadn’t ever read the rules, allow me to inform you that this is very bad.
This being Xavier, though, they were hardly content to let that be the story of the game. Jovan Milicevic (21/3/2) had carried the team with 13 points on three threes in the first half, but his friends showed up to help in the second. Tre Carroll had 14 of his 18 in the second and Filip Borovicanin (10/6/7) had all of his as he turned around a miserable first half and got back to being his usual self. Xavier ripped off their own 15-2 run to go back up 10 with just over 11 minutes to play.
But no one who had watched this team this season felt even a little comfortable with that. Coach Pitino had said his team just doesn’t defend after the Villanova game, and it was refreshing to see a group of young men determined to keep their coach from being a liar. Xavier’s winning odds dropped 21% in just two minutes as Marquette promptly scored seven of their own as Nigel James finally began to stir.
And then X pushed the lead back out and the winning odds climbed to 86%. Home and hosed, right? Of course not. Six minutes later Xavier was down to a 39% chance of winning. Roddie Anderson (9/5/3) and Malik Messina-Moore (18/4/3) were trying, but Xavier was slipping back into the morass. If the Musketeers were to win this game, there was really only one person who could do it.
If this game was every trope (lead blown, bad defense, untimely turnovers, mediocre rebounding, no bench bigs…) of the season played out, then there was only one left: a Tre Carroll shot that really had no business going in. This one danced tantalizingly around the rim before it fell, but after Carroll got a hand on a shot on the other end, there was no doubt that Xavier’s star was the one who had made the difference. This team is significantly better when he plays. It took him awhile to warm to the task today, but the smile on his face after the game was fun to see.
The reward for this win is UConn. Xavier has gotten obliterated by the Huskies twice. It will only take one win to erase those games from the memory. Is it likely? No, but we aren’t fans for the likely. We’re here for the improbable, the miraculous, the run that defies all explanation. Maybe Xavier’s started here today, with a little runner in the lane that made all the blown leads, missed boards, and weird turnovers disappear for a moment. Man, I love this sport.
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