Cincy at Xavier

The battle of Cincy, prefaced by the city's mayor was a tough ugly grinded out affair, with a big scare for Marvin Gentry who got hit by one of his teammates while going for a loose ball. As the ESPN people said, its saving grace was that it was a big intracity rivalry game. They call it the CrossTown ShootOut. Josh Duncan got injured too and left the game.

Xavier did not look good though, especially in the first half, but they did show why they are highly rated at crunch time when they made the plays while Cincy didn't.

This was the first time I had seen either time, and since it was a big rivalry game, a lot of the stuff you may deduce from a typical game gets thrown out the window.

The game however showcases the pros and cons of having a tiny little point guard like Drew Lavender. Both on defense and offense you gain and you lose. This may be something that may bite the X-Men in the NCAA tourney.

And kudos to ESPN for discussing Skip Prosser's tenure at Xavier; it's still hard to digest that Skip Prosser is gone :-(

More on this game at BallHype, RUWT?, and SBRforum, and AOL Sports Fanhouse.

PS> Something a bit strange in the broadcast, with 1 minute 5 seconds left during the timeout, someone approached the Cincy bench and one of the Cincy people in a business suits reached out and pushed him away.