Xavier is at its best as a March Madness underdog

SAN JOSE, Calif. - It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Not to the common college basketball fan, nor to the stathead who parses KenPom as a nighttime ritual.

Xavier was bad: a preseason top-10 team that didn’t really look the part out of the gate. Then the Musketeers lost their rudder in February following the season-ending ACL injury to star guard, Edmond Sumner.

They lost six straight, bookended by wins over DePaul (which are just recreational games; they don’t really count), meaning Xavier entered March with just one victory over a clear-cut tournament team.

The Musketeers salvaged an NCAA tournament bid in the Big East Tournament with a quarterfinal win over Butler, but many thought it would be a nice, quick appearance in March Madness. With little hope or expectation, the talk was about the great experience the freshman would get and what could be for 2018.

This year was going to be a missed opportunity for the Musketeers, sure, but not one that fans would be overly critical of, all things considered.

Then all that stuff you can’t forecast with numbers happened.

Maryland suddenly couldn’t penetrate a once unreliable perimeter defense.

Florida State got knocked down with a lights-out shooting effort that had never been seen from this Chris Mack team.

Arizona’s blue-chip guards weren’t comfortable against a zone, and meanwhile Trevon Bluiett, J.P. Macura, and Malcolm Bernard were able to shoot at will.

“We could not guard them,” Arizona head coach Sean Miller said after the Musketeers shocked the Wildcats, 73-71, to become this tournament’s biggest surprise ... again.

If you have been paying attention to Xavier since 2003, when the program made the first of now three Elite Eight runs, you know that these guys thrive as the underdog. In fact, it’s probably safe to say, now, that upsets are a staple of who they are.

The Musketeers have made eight Sweet 16s at an average seed of 6.25. This year they’re an 11-seed, the highest remaining seed left in the tournament, and now perhaps riding the highest level of confidence of those remaining.

It’s like being an underdog mentally puts these guys in a place where they feel like they’re the favorite. How meta.

Last season, Xavier found themselves in that role of favorite — a much-deserved two seed after being a top-10 mainstay that pundits felt was Final Four-quality — only to fall in the second round of the tournament because of a gutting buzzer-beater from Wisconsin.

Being a favorite felt too uncomfortable, or something.

Xavier was not supposed to play for a Final Four this year. That was last year, or maybe even next year.

That’s the nature of the NCAA tournament though. Variance happens, and teams start doing things you’ve never seen from them all season. You make plans or have expectations, and before you can even stop and think about what just went down, the next game has already tipped off.

So now, after 2004 and 2008 regional final losses to blue-bloods Duke and UCLA, respectively, the Musketeers’ latest shot comes against a team that arguably paved the way for small-school, basketball-first programs to get the exposure they receive today.

Gonzaga has never been to a Final Four either, but its special run to the Elite Eight in 1999 propelled the program and also fueled Butler’s back-to-back national championship appearances and memorable runs by George Mason, VCU, and Wichita St. in the last decade.

Xavier, slightly more advanced than those programs in terms of resources and revenue, still feels like a part of this group, along with a sprinkling of other Big East, A-10, and Missouri Valley Conference schools. The Musketeers are still clinging to underdog status, now second all-time in NCAA tournament berths without a Final Four appearance.

Maybe this is the year, when we least expected it, but perhaps when it was actually most likely to happen. If you’re into storytelling, it’s really the most fitting way.