It is 29 degrees and snowing here. The wind is blowing so hard that the surface level on the western end of Lake Erie has dropped five feet. Within the next couple of days, we could get nearly a foot of snow. Here is what it looks like in Corpus Christi:<\/p>\n
You get the point. It\u2019s nice there. Corpus Christi is even south of Galveston and is not likely to see much snow this week. I don\u2019t know if there is a home weather environment in college basketball, but if there ever has been, it could be in this game. It may not be as bad in Cincy as in NE Ohio come Friday, but I\u2019m guessing the Islanders won\u2019t feel right at home.<\/p>\n
They\u2019ll step off the plane with a 0-4 record in D1 games. They beat D3 Trinity by 27, then beat another D3, Howard Payne, by 47. There is a reason Xavier doesn\u2019t play D3 games. Some teams are very good and feature one or two guys good enough to play rotation minutes at a D1. Others are Trinity and Howard Payne. To TAMCC\u2019s credit, they haven\u2019t embarrassed themselves against D1 competition, losing close(ish) games to SMU and Tarleton St before dropping buy games at Kansas and Oklahoma St.<\/p>\n
Xavier is an inexcusably bad 41% and 355th in the nation at two point shooting. They will also be the best team inside the arc in this game. The Islanders are 38.5% and 363rd. This has the potential to get hilarious. TAMCC is also awful behind the arc, shooting 27.7%. Honestly speaking, Xavier friends, these guys are wretched on offense. They rank 290th for a reason. The thing they do best is not get the ball stolen. They are 159th in the nation there.<\/p>\n
On defense, though! Ok, they aren\u2019t exactly peak VCU, but they\u2019re back closer to mediocre. They turn teams over at almost the exact same rate that Xavier does. They defend the arc decently, and try to limit opponents looks there. They don\u2019t necessarily succeed at that, but they do try.<\/p>\n
The Islanders get a decent amount of minute from their bench and can bring in a couple of solid producers when the starters need spelled. First and foremost is Mason Gibson, a guard who is 3rd on the team in scoring at 10.7 ppg. He is shooting 43% from deep this year and hardly ever turns the ball over, but is just 8-23 inside the arc and 3-8 from the line currently. Daniel Michelini-Jackson missed last game, but has started three games and averages 23 mpg. He\u2019s a guard who doesn\u2019t score a lot, but does solid work on the boards and is second on the team in assists, with a 13:4 A:TO on the year. Leo Torbor is a bit of a rarity in today\u2019s game as a 6\u20193\u201d guard who has attempted just 5 three pointers in his 46 games of DI basketball. He shoots 50% from inside the arc, although that figure drops to 36% against DI opponents, and currently has more turnovers than assists. Kobi Pearson is a 6\u20198\u201d freshman who slots in at the forward spots who missed the first two games of the season, but has shown some promising signs since joining the rotation. His EFG% is 69% on a .625\/.667\/.521 line, but he\u2019s also done some true freshman things like turning the ball over a ton and committing 7.7 fouls per 40 minutes. When Pearson isn\u2019t out there splashing shots and slapping people, Jaden Haire is the other big man off the bench. He rebounds well, especially at the defensive end, but is shooting 2-12 from the floor against DI competition and turns the ball over a lot, which drags his ORTG down to 53.3.<\/p>\n
– Will Xavier bother going inside? Make no mistake, Xavier isn\u2019t good inside the arc. However, TAMCC doesn\u2019t defend well inside. They\u2019re 276th in the nation in interior defense. Maybe some inside Borovicanin? Maybe this is the game where Anthony Robinson can finally do something?<\/p>\n
– Failing that, can Xavier stay hot from deep? TAMCC isn\u2019t particularly good at defending the arc, but they\u2019re alright at it. Right now, X is absolutely on fire from deep, shooting 46.2% on 93 attempts over the last three games. Keep that up and they become the best three point shooting team ever. That\u2019s maybe not in the cards, but right now X has found an edge.<\/p>\n
– Can X just bury a buy game? Marist and Le Moyne were way too close. Santa Clara, it turns out, is 57th in the NET and not half bad. Doing what the Musketeers did to ODU would be a nice way to close Black Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It is 29 degrees and snowing here. The wind is blowing so hard that the surface level on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68590,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[35222,155,157,156],"class_list":{"0":"post-68589","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-corpus-christi","8":"tag-2025-game-previews","9":"tag-corpus-christi","10":"tag-corpus-christi-headlines","11":"tag-corpus-christi-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}