Washington Scores 21 as Xavier Pulls Away From Mississippi State 81-63 at Greenbrier

Tru Washington scored a game-high 21 points with eight rebounds and Xavier’s bench added 34 points as the Musketeers pulled away from Mississippi State, 81-63, on Friday night at The Greenbrier Resort’s Colonial Hall in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia — Xavier’s first significant win of the season, improving the Musketeers to 4-0, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported from the game. The Greenbrier Tip-Off game was played in a ballroom-turned-basketball court holding just 1,200 spectators, most of them in Xavier blue by the final minutes, the Enquirer reported.

It was the latest unconventional stop on an Xavier schedule that has made a habit of them. Last month the Musketeers opened exhibition play outdoors, beating Dayton at the Lindner Family Tennis Center in the CareSource Invitational, the Enquirer noted — and Friday they passed their first major regular-season test in a room normally used for corporate conventions, banquets and congressional retreats. Xavier led for more than 37 minutes: Mississippi State scored the game’s first four points, Washington answered with five straight, and the Musketeers never trailed again, according to the Enquirer.

“I thought we did a good job playing under control, playing smart and doing a lot of good things,” head coach Richard Pitino told the Cincinnati Enquirer. “Our depth, again, we’re able to go 10 deep and everybody’s really providing value off the bench.” That depth showed in the box score the Enquirer reported: 34 bench points and 17 bench rebounds, with starter Jovan Milicevic adding 12 points and Nikos Chitikoudis 11, and Gabriel Pozzato and Ruben Dominguez scoring nine apiece with two 3-pointers each.

An Xavier offense that had lived at the rim through its first three games won this one from the perimeter, going 10-for-23 on 3-pointers and 23-of-34 at the free-throw line, the Enquirer reported. Mississippi State’s own shooting told the other half of the story: the Bulldogs finished just 4-of-29 from three-point range, Yardbarker reported in its account of the game — a cold night that let Xavier’s lead breathe whenever the Bulldogs threatened a run.

The defensive assignment at the center of the game plan was Mississippi State guard Josh Hubbard, who ranked 10th in the nation in scoring last season. Hubbard finished with 12 points on 4-of-12 shooting with four turnovers, did not attempt a shot in the second half until the 9:26 mark, and scored his only second-half basket with 6:16 remaining, the Enquirer reported. Washington started the game on Hubbard, freshman Kalek House took a turn, and Xavier’s frontcourt made life difficult off screens. “Hubbard is a great player,” Pitino told the Enquirer. “I thought we did a great job on ball screens having active hands.”

Xavier also held its own against one of the country’s best early rebounding teams, winning the glass 44-43, though Mississippi State turned 15 offensive rebounds into 18 second-chance points — the one flaw Pitino flagged afterward. “I don’t think we were great defensive rebounding,” he told the Enquirer. “We’re getting stops. We were getting the initial stop, but that’s something we absolutely need to work on because we’re playing really good defense.”

The win lands in the middle of a loud Southwest Ohio basketball weekend. On Saturday night in Dayton, Cincinnati routed Dayton 95-72 in its first UD Arena visit since 2004 — the same Flyers program Xavier beat outdoors in October — a game NewsForce247 previewed as an early-season Ohio basketball clash. Xavier’s 4-0 start, built on depth and defense rather than a single star, now gets its first true home tests.

What we know — and what we’re still waiting on

What we know: Xavier is 4-0 with a neutral-site win over an SEC opponent; Washington (21 points, eight rebounds) leads a 10-deep rotation whose bench outscored Mississippi State’s by a wide margin; and the Musketeers held one of the nation’s top returning scorers to 12 quiet points, per the Enquirer and Yardbarker. What we’re still waiting on: whether the defensive rebounding Pitino flagged costs Xavier against bigger frontcourts, and how the rotation settles once the schedule turns to ranked visitors at Cintas Center.

What happens next is the homestand: Xavier returns to Cintas Center to host Cleveland State on Tuesday, November 17, with the Iowa Hawkeyes visiting on Friday, November 20, the Enquirer reported. Game details in this report are from the Cincinnati Enquirer, which covered the game on site, with Mississippi State’s shooting line reported by Yardbarker.

Photo: Schaafcw, CC BY-SA