Not Just Three Musketeers

God knows I was pulling for West Virginia last night. I had them in one of my pools advancing. Joe Alexander is my favorite player. The Big East is my favorite conference. The Mountaineers also have some real hustlers, fun guys to watch like Ruoff and Mazzulla.....guys with talent like Da 'Sean Butler. They have a big-time and colorful coach in Bob Huggins.

But it wasn't meant to be. There were Musketeers all over the place. Yes, Xavier just brought it all last night. They shot 28-59 from the field and a cool 11-19 from 3-point land, supposedly a favorite Mountaineer hangout. They out-rebounded the Mountaineers too, 39-34. But it wasn't really a game about statistics, as impressive as they were.

It was really a lot like all those "Three Musketeers" movies, one for all and all for one and all that. But it wasn't just three guys. Sure, you could point to Josh Duncan and his career-high 26 points. Or you could say Stanley Burrell won the game with his all-around game and his cross-court pass to B.J. Raymond that finally iced the boys in blue. C.J. Anderson went 6 for 12 from the field and had 10 rebounds, 6 on the offensive boards.

But if you were clad in white last night, and only eight players were, you were touched by the angels. Derrick Brown only scored 9 but played 30 minutes with just 1 turnover and had 3 rebounds and 2 assists. Drew Lavender played 38 minutes, had 7 assists and just 1 turnover. B.J. Raymond did not too much all night but then went nuts in overtime, making more three-pointers in that period than the entire West Virginia team made all night.

But there was also big sophomore Jason Love, 6'9" and 255 pounds muscling 10 rebounds in just 21 minutes and freshman Dante Jackson didn't embarrass himself either. In 18 minutes, he took one 3-pointer and made it, while chipping in with an assist, a rebound and a steal.

They just wouldn't be denied, these Musketeers. Even when Joe Alexander went off in the second half, and for about ten minutes or so, anybody watching and listening had to think he'd take it all away, either by a nice shot, a strong rebound or sheer hustle. And with little Joe Mazzulla running around loose and Alex Ruoff in the right spots, and those refs hanging foul after foul on the Musketeers, surely the Mountaineers would prevail, right?

I mean, couldn't they just accept they were "beat", I mean, the refs were against them, Joe Alexander was everywhere, these little pesky guys were doing all the right things, and it was, after all, the Big East they were fighting. How could this little upstart Atlantic friggin' 10 team from Cincinnati think they could play with the Big Boys from the Big East?

And then there was a sequence that gave me the willies, that seemed to turn the game around. Surely D’Artagnan laid his sword over the basket in that 4^th quarter. Not only did Alexander miss the jumper, but then one Mountaineer grabbed the rebound, went back up and missed. Then another Mountaineer did the same thing and just missed, then still ANOTHER Mountaineer grabbed that rebound and AGAIN could not put that ball down from two feet. Finally, after an eternity of misses, Xavier finally grabbed the ball, and, as it turned out, the game.

Of course it didn’t end there. Big East fans everywhere would later thrill to Alexander’s jumper that floated right in with just over14 seconds on the clock, thus tying the game and, as he was fouled on the play, surely Joe would finally put this game away at the line. But he missed.

The game went into overtime, as do so many of these NCAA tournament games. And it seemed for a while that West Virginia would finally prevail, going up by 6. But, lo and behold, Joe Alexander fouled out. “That isn’t good,” I said to myself.

But that wasn’t all that wasn’t good. West Virginia missed four of six free throws in the extra period, and they shot only 18-27 from the foul line all night. The 18,103 in the live audience and millions at home could readily see that the hex was truly on the Mountaineers.

One for all, all for one. That one turned out to be B.J. Raymond in the final minutes. He hit a three from the top of the key with 1:18 left to put the Musketeers on top once again. Shortly afterwards, he got loose, snagged the nice pass from Burrell and sunk still another three to put his team up by four with just 30 seconds left.

By then, it was all over, at least it was to me. West Virginia, after all, did not deserve to win this game. Xavier certainly did. And when I really thought about it, I had to figure that, if any team could jolt UCLA in the final of the West Region, it would be this band of upstarts from Xavier, these damned all-for-one guys.

It was a great game though. Good hustle all-around, great plays on offense and defense, the lead going back and forth. It was so good that not even CBS could ruin it, not with skatey-eight commercials or the inane superlatives that kept issuing from the mouths of the succubi in the booth.

Never was a team more deserving of advancing. Hopefully, they will not have left it all on the floor last night. Hopefully, they can gut out one more win against the favorite to win it all, UCLA.

Despite my misgivings about big-time college basketball, I have to admit that games such as this one perhaps make it all worthwhile. There are, after all, worse things going on in America. The President, the war, the gas, the dollar, the economy, health care, Hillary or Barack as the alternatives, lots of things.

And only one winner will take this thing. Xavier ?