3 Wins Close Out Regular Season
The Saint Xavier University men’s basketball team has earned three consecutive wins to finish the regular season.
The streak began with an 80-72 win at Trinity International University, then the Cougars picked up a 90-76 home victory against Roosevelt University on Wednesday before finishing the regular season with a 70-62 triumph at Trinity Christian College on Saturday.
The Roosevelt game was a rematch of a Dec. 19 road game which the Cougars were just able to eke out, 68-63.
Saint Xavier was in control from the beginning on Wednesday, and the Cougars came away with a senior day win.
Roosevelt started the game with four guards and just one forward and kept that lineup for most of the contest. This allowed SXU’s big men to feast in the paint. The team scored 60 of its 90 points in the paint.
Sophomore Tony Core had his most offensively productive night in quite some time, putting up 14 points against Roosevelt’s small lineup. He also came down with four rebounds (3 of them offensive boards).
Fellow sophomore Josh Mawhorr found similar success down low. The center had ten points and grabbed five rebounds (four of which were offensive).
Senior Brad Karp, playing in his final regular season home game, did not disappoint the crowd. He had a double-double with game-highs of 29 points and 10 rebounds while playing nearly every minute of the game.
The two other seniors on the team also started the ballgame. Guard Munir Smith had a block in limited time, while point guard Michael Simpson was the third leading scorer with 15 points and was second on the team with five assists.
The Cougars had soundly defeated the Trinity Christian Trolls on Jan. 8 by a final score of 111-84. The going would not be so easy for Saint Xavier on Saturday in their final regular season game.
Saint Xavier led the entire game after a 12-12 tie with 14:25 left in the first half, but they could not pull away and make the game’s outcome a foregone conclusion.
The Cougars effectively spread the scoring around. Karp and junior guard Jack Krieger tied for the team lead with 16 points apiece.
Karp got his second consecutive double-double, corralling a game-high 13 rebounds. Krieger was just a rebound away from getting a double-double of his own.
Simpson was the third leading scorer, this time dropping 13 on the Trolls. Mawhorr backed him up with 11 points.
After having scored two-thirds of their 90 points against Roosevelt in the paint, the Cougars were forced to settle for jumpers against the Trolls. They came away with only 26 points in the paint, while Trinity Christian had 28.
Looking Ahead
With the regular season in the rear-view mirror, the Cougars set their sights on the Chicagoland Collegiate Athletic Conference (CCAC) tournament.
The tournament is formatted so that teams from the north division play teams from the south division.
The Cougars, ranked second in the north (behind Cardinal Stritch University), are slated to take on the south’s third seed, the University of Saint Francis (Ill.), in the first round. That game is tonight at 7 p.m. and can be heard on WXAV 88.3 FM.
The two teams met once in the regular season, an 84-72 home win for the Cougars on Jan. 25.
They will look to replicate that victory in the quarterfinals tonight in hopes of advancing to the semifinals on Friday.
Tim Carroll
Senior Sports Editor