9: Xavier
The relentless Musketeers could be the X
factor in the
NCAA tournament
 Above the door leading into the Xavier locker room the word
FAMILY is printed in blue letters. It is a reminder of the
Musketeers' all-for-one attitude and has special meaning
for James Posey. Three years ago Posey, with five other
promising freshmen who had the campus buzzing, enrolled at
Xavier, a 6,500-student
Jesuit school in Cincinnati. A few days before practice was to
begin, however, Posey found out that he had failed to gain
a high enough ACT score to qualify for a scholarship and
would have to sit out the 1995-96 season. Suddenly he felt
he was outside the
family.
That year Posey was depressed and tried to stay clear of
his teammates during the season. He went to some home games
but often left early. There were times when he
didn't want to study, but he knew that his father, James,
was working two jobs to help
pay his $16,000 tuition. "Every day I thought of my
parents," says Posey, a
6'8" junior forward. "I couldn't let them
down."
The Musketeers struggled to a 13-15 record that year and
not much was expected of them last season. But with a core
of undersized players bolstered by the now eligible Posey,
Xavier exceeded
expectations, finishing 23-6 and winning the
Atlantic 10 West
Division. And Posey, who averaged 13.3 points and 7.8 rebounds
per game coming off the bench, was named the conference's
sixth man of the
year.
Posey should continue in that role this season, and not
much else will change for Xavier, which has its top six
players back. Junior guards Lenny Brown (15.6 points a
game) and Gary Lumpkin (14.7) have a cohesiveness that
comes from seven years of
playing together in junior high and high school as well as in
college, and they'll direct a frontcourt anchored by
6'8" senior center
Torraye
Braggs, who averaged 13.9 points in the Musketeers' neatly
balanced
attack.
"We're not going to get guys who are
6'10" and can run like gazelles here, so we have to go
out and play one way—hard," says coach Skip Prosser.
"We go into almost every game with a height
disadvantage, but my feeling is, if we can run and press,
we'll be pretty hard to guard,
too."
Maintaining its intensity
shouldn't be a problem for Xavier, but the Musketeers must
do a better job off the glass after having been
outrebounded by an average of 6.7 a game last season.
Expectations are at an alltime high for Xavier, which
didn't
lose two games in a row last year and was ranked as high as 13
in the AP poll—the loftiest in school history.
|
Last Year | 23-6 |
|
Returning Starters | 5 |
| Points Per Game '96-97 | 83.2 |
| PPG By All Returning Players | 79.8 | Prosser isn't the least bit worried that success has
spoiled his Musketeers. "The strength of this team is
its ability to fight and come together," says Prosser.
"We can't afford to have a Benedict Arnold; everybody
has to contribute for us to win."
—B.J. Schecter
Next: Purdue
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