Xavier coach Chris Mack knows his team’s capable of big things this season. They have size, athletic wings, a sharpshooter and one of the nation’s best point guards in senior Tu Holloway.
So it’s understandable that Mack wasn’t completely pleased by Friday’s 14-point win over Georgia. Yes, that’s a double-digit win over an SEC team.
It’s not that Mack is disdainful of the Bulldogs. He just expects his Musketeers (4-0) to be really, really good. And to play like it throughout the game. They forced Georgia into missing its first 11 shots and always held a double-digit lead.
Still, Mack wanted a little more. He wanted that finishing kick associated with Final Four teams. From the Cincinnati Enquirer:“The last six minutes or so we played the score once again. And I don’t want to discredit Georgia because their kids kept playing hard and the final margin was 14. It was 30 at one point…”
At that point in the press conference, Mack was informed that the widest margin was actually 36. He paused for a moment.
“Don’t tell me that,” he said. “Ahh, that’s frustrating.”
The most frustrating aspect surely relates to Monday’s game at Vanderbilt.
The Commodores are one of the SEC’s top teams and play at a particularly vexing arena in Memorial Gymnasium. They won’t have center Festus Ezeli, but they do have two other NBA-caliber players in John Jenkins and Jeff Taylor. (Vandy also had its early season wake-up call after a setback to Cleveland State, too.)
Pretty sure that’s what was on Mack’s mind. It’d be on mine, too.
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