Description

The tattered wreckage of another NCAA tournament favorite laid on the floor of No. 11-seeded Xavier's locker room, amid all the cut-off ankle-tape husks, wadded-up towels and navy-blue jerseys. The Musketeers print up their pregame scouting reports on a series of poster-sized white sheets, complete with opposing player headshots, breakdowns of tendencies, and guidelines for how to stop them.The Musketeers' managers tape the scouting reports to the wall—at the SAP Center before their Sweet 16 game against No. 2-seeded, 7.5-point favorite Arizona, the sheets were on the back wall of a repurposed hockey locker room—and players' tradition after wins is to storm in, tear them down, and then tear them to pieces. Late Thursday night, the faces of the Wildcats' stars could be spotted among the refuse. There was the sheet for Lauri Markkanen, the 7-foot, soon-to-be NBA lottery pick, who finished with just nine points on 1-of-6 long-range shooting, and whom Xavier had targeted as a soft defender. There was the face of potential draft pick Allonzo Trier, the lethal, off-the-dribble scorer whom they wanted to contain with their 2-3 zone, figuring that the ball would stick in his hands more that way. He'd gone on a big, second-half run, scoring 15 straight Arizona points. But he hero-balled four straight possessions against the zone in the final minutes, while Xavier mounted one of this NCAA tournament's most improbable comebacks, from being down 69–61 with 3:44 left, to winning 73–71 in regulation.