Xavier Nation - The Official Magazine for Xavier Athletics

X AV I E R N AT I O N M A G A Z I N E

XavierNation THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE FOR XAVIER ATHLETICS

TWO SIDES OF

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STAINBROOK SILLY. SERIOUS. GOOFY. INTENSE. THE MUSKETEERS’ SENIOR CENTER IS ALL OF THE ABOVE

BACK IN BLACK

GONE FISHING

RECRUITING

STAY CONNECTED

XAVIER GETS NEW LOOK FROM NIKE

GREGG DOYEL HITS THE POND WITH CHRIS MACK

AN INSIDE LOOK AT THE PROCESS

OUR TWITTER 100, FAN SITES, AND MORE

FALL 2014

TABLE OF CONTENTS

WARMUP

11 Back in Black Black uniforms are part of Xavier’s wardrobe options again.

12 Around Town XU student-athletes serve the community in so many ways.

14 Sister Story What makes Sister Rose Ann Fleming tick? Find out in Laura Pulfer’s new book Out of Habit.

16 The Players Learn more about XU’s players: Jalen Reynolds, Brandon Randolph, Remy Abell, and Annina Äijänen.

24 New Kids The men’s and women’s basketball teams have a combined 15 new faces. Get to know the new kids on the block.

COOL DOWN

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54 At the Movies Technology has changed the way Xavier coaches scout and prepare for opponents.

COVER STORY

TWO SIDES TO EVERY STORY YOU WANT TO KNOW XU SENIOR MATT STAINBROOK? IT’S NOT ALL THAT SIMPLE.

P H OT O G R A P H S B Y G R E G R U S T

BALANCING ACT How exactly do Chris Mack and Brian Neal balance being prominent Division I basketball coaches, husbands, and fathers?

It’s a challenge.

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TWIST OF FATE It’s now up to second-year head coach Brian Neal to rebuild Xavier’s women’s basketball program.

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There is a plan behind crafting the Musketeers’ non-conference schedule.

58 #StayingConnected Facebook. Twitter. Instagram.

Blogs. If you want to follow Xavier sports online, these tools are all your friends.

63 Where Are They Now?

FEATURES

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56 The Match Game

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GONE FISHING Former CBSSports.com columnist Gregg Doyel goes fishing with men’s basketball coach Chris Mack.

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THE ART OF RECRUITING Want to learn more about Xavier’s recruiting process?

This is the place to start.

Catching up with former XU basketball players Kevin Frey and Jennifer Phillips.

65 Outlook A look at all 18 Musketeer teams.

68 En Garde, D’Artagnan He is one busy guy, but D’Artagnan spares a few minutes for Xavier Nation magazine.

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XavierNation XAVIER UNIVERSITY TEAM PHYSICIANS SINCE 1999

T H E O F F I C I A L M AG A Z I N E FO R X AV I E R AT H L E T I C S

PUBLISHED & PRODUCED BY Cincinnati Magazine (John Lunn, President & Publisher) Vehr Communications (Nick Vehr, President) Xavier University Athletics (Greg Christopher, Athletic Director) EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Michael Perry (Vehr Communications) CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Dan Guttridge (Vehr Communications) Kara Renee Hagerman (Cincinnati Magazine) Molly Ryan (Vehr Communications) Amanda Boyd Walters (Cincinnati Magazine)

Xavier University Team Physicians Since 1999

Robert R. Burger, M.D.

REPORTERS Gregg Doyel, Marc Emral, Dave Malaska, Tabari McCoy, Rodney McKissic, Michael Perry (Vehr Communications) PHOTOGRAPHERS Doug Cochran, Philip Groshong, Cliff Jenkins (Xavier University), Greg Rust (Xavier University), Bob Stevens ILLUSTRATOR Kevin Necessary SPECIAL THANKS Tom Eiser (Xavier University) Brian Hicks (Xavier University) Mario Mercurio (Xavier University) ADVERTISING DIRECTOR Ivy Bayer (Cincinnati Magazine)

Henry A. Stiene, M.D.

For more information, scan this QR code with your smart phone.

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ART DIRECTOR Danielle Johnson (Cincinnati Magazine)

MARKETING DIRECTOR Chris Ohmer (Cincinnati Magazine) SENIOR ACCOUNT REPRESENTATIVES Maggie Wint Goecke, Matt Reis (Cincinnati Magazine) ACCOUNT REPRESENTATIVES Laura Bowling, Christie Goetz, Lisa Lawrence, Jenny Swain (Cincinnati Magazine) ADVERTISING & MARKETING DESIGNER Jen Kawanari (Cincinnati Magazine) ADVERTISING DESIGNER Emily Nevius (Cincinnati Magazine) ART & PRODUCTION MANAGER Julie Whitaker (Cincinnati Magazine) OPERATIONS DIRECTOR Missy Beiting (Cincinnati Magazine) BUSINESS COORDINATOR Erica Birkle (Cincinnati Magazine)

XAVIER NATION MAGAZINE 700 Walnut St., Suite 450, Cincinnati, OH 45202 513.381.8347 • www.XavierNationMagazine.com

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FROM THE EDITOR

CONTRIBUTORS

GREGG DOYEL Award-winning columnist for The Indianapolis Star. Also worked at CBSSports.com, the Tampa Tribune, Miami Herald, and Charlotte Observer and authored books on Kentucky and Duke basketball. @GreggDoyelStar

MARC EMRAL A 26-year journalism veteran.

Was longtime senior editor for the Community Press newspapers. Also former editor of The Downtowner. @memral

DAVE MALASKA Former Cincinnati Post staffer and a freelancer who has covered high school, college, and professional sports for more than 20 years. @dmalaska

TABARI McCOY Former CinWeekly arts, entertainment, and news reporter.

A professional stand-up comedian. Also worked at Community Press papers and was a Bengals intern. @tabarimccoy

RODNEY McKISSIC Former Xavier beat reporter for The Cincinnati Post and former sports reporter for the Buffalo News and The News Tribune in Tacoma, Washington. @rodneymckissic

WELCOME

Trying Something New

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IT’S ALWAYS FUN TO CREATE A PUBLICATION FROM SCRATCH. YOU TRY SOME

things that work perfectly; you pursue ideas that don’t quite come off as expected. And really, that’s the beauty of it.

In the end, you hope to strike the right balance by providing useful, informative, memorable, or entertaining content.

That’s what we strived for with this first edition of Xavier Nation magazine, a new publication brought to you by Xavier Athletics and designed specifically for its passionate and supportive fans.

The magazine is the brainchild of Xavier Athletic Director Greg Christopher, who brings a fresh perspective and innovative approach to engaging fans. Christopher brought up the idea early in 2014. He had a pretty clear vision as to what he wanted to see: information that extended well beyond the statistics and history of a traditional media guide, along with stories that bring to life the coaches and athletes who represent Xavier. “Content you can’t find anywhere else,” was the directive.

My history with Xavier dates back to 1994 when, as a reporter for The Cincinnati Enquirer, I covered the men’s basketball team in the National Invitation Tournament, Pete Gillen’s departure to Providence College, and Skip Prosser’s arrival as coach 10 days after the season ended. I became The Enquirer’s full-time Xavier beat reporter in 1996 and covered Musketeers sports until 2000. In 2008, I authored and published the book Xavier Tales: Great Stories from Musketeers Basketball.

I currently am vice president of content strategy at Vehr Communications LLC, working for Nick Vehr, a former chief of staff to the president at Xavier University. Vehr Communications, a Cincinnati-based strategic communications firm, and Cincinnati Magazine are collaborating with Xavier officials to produce this publication. We plan to publish twice a year—in the fall and spring.

This really is for you, so please let us know what you think. Send any and all feedback to musketeers@xaviernationmagazine.com.

Have fun. We did.

Sincerely,

Michael Perry, Editor-in-Chief musketeers@xaviernationmagazine.com

MICHAEL PERRY Former Xavier beat reporter and former sports editor of The Cincinnati Enquirer. Author and publisher of Xavier Tales: Great Stories from Musketeers Basketball (2008). @mdperry14

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HAPPY DEBUT // Coach

Mike Johnson’s Musketeers captured a thrilling 3–2 victory over Duquesne during the first official Xavier sporting event on Cintas Center’s new floor, the Queen City Invitational. Xavier also defeated UC Irvine and Cincinnati on its way to winning the title.

PHOTOGRAPH BY DOUG COCHRAN

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IT’S SKYLINE TIME NO, NOT THE CHILI. XAVIER UNVEILS ITS NEW CINTAS CENTER COURT, FEATURING THE SKYLINE OF CINCINNATI, FOR THE QUEEN CITY INVITATIONAL VOLLEYBALL TOURNAMENT IN AUGUST.

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NICE TO MEET YOU SISTER ROSE ANN FLEMING IS THE CINCINNATI REDS’ HONORARY CAPTAIN FOR THEIR 3–0 VICTORY OVER THE ARIZONA DIAMONDBACKS AT GREAT AMERICAN BALL PARK.

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BATTER UP // Xavier’s

academic advisor for student-athletes delivers the Reds lineup card to the umpire before the game with Reds coach Lee Tinsley standing by. More than 1,000 Xavier University alumni and employees paraded around the field before the game, then filled the moon deck in right field for “Xavier Night with the Reds” on July 29, 2014.

PHOTOGRAPH BY GREG RUST

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GOOD TIMES // From left, Makinde London, Remy Abell, graduate assistant Ty Sampson, Trevon Bluiett, James Farr, Edmond Sumner, and Kevin Coker cheer from the dugout during the inaugural Xavier Softball World Series on July 31, 2014. Matt Stainbrook and Dee Davis served as captains when a draft was held in mid-July.

Team Davis won the game.

PHOTOGRAPH BY GREG RUST

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TAKE ME OUT TO THE... …SOFTBALL GAME? MEN’S BASKETBALL PLAYERS, COACHES AND STAFF GET TOGETHER FOR WHAT THEY CALLED THE XAVIER SOFTBALL WORLD SERIES.

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Warmup

// JUST TO GET YOU STARTED:

JERSEYS, SISTER, PLAYERS & MORE

10 FACTS ABOUT XU’S UNIFORMS

1 // Xavier’s uniforms are on a

three-year cycle with Nike. This is the second year of the cycle.

2 // Plans for the new black uniforms were finalized in the summer of 2013.

They were ordered in December 2013 and just arrived in October 2014.

3 // Designs for Xavier’s 2015-16 line

Back in Black

of apparel arrived for review and feedback in May 2014. This includes everything but uniforms (practice uniforms, warmups, travel attire, coaches’ apparel, and more).

4 // Among the items Xavier may order from Nike: game uniforms, practice uniforms, sweatshirts, T-shirts, polo shirts, socks, arm sleeves, knee pads, tights for under shorts, backpacks, travel bags, and dopp kits. Nike provided batting gloves for Xavier’s team/staff softball game in August.

5 // The next new version of

Xavier uniforms will be in 2016–17.

Nike will provide as many as 10 styles/designs in spring 2015. Xavier will then provide feedback. Nike and Xavier will work together until they settle on a new style.

6 // Xavier players, coaches, and

athletic department officials will be involved in choosing the next style.

7 // Xavier has a Nike NTS contract; that stands for Nike Team Sports.

Roughly 30 schools have that level of contract. The only way to get a higher level (platinum) is to win a national championship.

8 // Xavier players go through a combined 300+ pairs of shoes during the course of a year, which includes running shoes, cross training shoes, and shower shoes.

P H OT O G R A P H B Y G R E G R U S T

9 // When Xavier players, coaches,

and staff see a uniform design they like at any level of any sport, they sometimes pass it along to their Nike representative. For example: Mercurio says the Xavier coaches like the Team USA basketball uniforms that were worn this summer at the FIBA World Cup Games and the style of the numbers on Arkansas football jerseys.

10 // This summer, Xavier signed a contract with Indianapolis-based Strategic Marketing Affiliates, a collegiate licensing company that will help Xavier apparel and other items become available in more retail locations. Xavier’s annual revenue from retail sales was just over $120,000 in 2013.

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Junior forward James Farr shows off Xavier’s new black uniform.

FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE the David West era, the Xavier men’s basketball team will wear a jersey that’s not blue, white, or gray.

The Musketeers will have an option this season to wear black uniforms. They had a black Reebok uniform during West’s sophomore season (2000–01), then had a black Nike version his junior and senior years (2001–02, 2002–03).

Xavier became a Nike school in 2001 after Thad Matta took over as coach. Prior to that, it had an agreement with Reebok. “When we had the opportunity to make the switch, we had to take it,” says Mario Mercurio, Xavier’s director of basketball administration and the staff’s direct contact to Nike.

“Nike is the gold standard.”

When and how often Xavier men’s basketball will wear black is not based on any scientific process. Superstition could play a role. Players, coaches, and fans might have a say. It all depends.

Mercurio says no decisions have been made yet. —MICHAEL PERRY

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WARMUP

AROUND TOWN

HELPING HANDS XAVIER TEAMS PARTICIPATE IN 25-30 COMMUNITY SERVICE GROUP PROJECTS EACH YEAR

1 1 DEVIN’S TEAM: The men’s soccer team played host to the third annual Down Syndrome Awareness Classic in April that raised funds for “Devin’s Team”—named for XU soccer coach Andy Fleming’s daughter Devin—and the Down Syndrome Association of Greater Cincinnati.

2 HABITAT FOR HUMANITY: Xavier studentathletes help rehab a foreclosed home while working with Habitat for Humanity. From left: Former XU golfer Joo Young Lee, men’s golfer Tanapol Vattanapisit, former XU golfer Nicholas Crozier and current golfer Patrick Horsting.

3 ADOPT A CLASS: Women’s soccer player Catherine Allon and former players Lauren Heap and Laura Rao organize a kickball game for the team’s adopted class.

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4 ONE SHINING MOMENT: Trey Couch, 12, signs a letter of intent to join XU’s basketball team as part of Team Impact, whose mission is to improve the quality of life for children facing life-threatening and chronic illnesses such as his (Cerebellar Degeneration). Left is his dad Greg; right is Xavier coach Chris Mack.

5 WORKING WITH KIDS: Dee Davis plays with a youngster last spring at a youth clinic for United Way and the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Cincinnati.

6 BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB: Women’s soccer players Megan Dalton and Maddy John team up with the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Cincinnati to work with at-risk children.

7 FIGHTING CANCER: Derek Hasenbeck was one of 16 Xavier baseball players to shave their heads following the Musketeers’ game against Villanova on April 13 as part of a fundraiser to benefit the Vs. Cancer Foundation and a local hospital. The group raised about $12,000.

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8 HELPING THE HOMELESS: Xavier’s StudentAthlete Advisory Committee organizes numerous charitable opportunities, including this trip to City Gospel Mission to help serve food to homeless members of the community.

9 ACADEMY OF WORLD LANGUAGES: Men’s soccer player Garrett Halfhill reads to students in the team’s adopted class in January 2014.

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WARMUP

OFF THE COURT

Pulfer spent most of the first half of 2014 talking with Sister and about 80 others, discussing Sister’s life and her work for Xavier University. Pulfer’s big takeaway: “What she does better than anyone else I’ve seen, is she gets people who need help to accept help. And sometimes that is not so easy.”

WHAT ELSE DID PULFER LEARN? Word choices. “She treats those students

with such respect. I never once heard her call them ‘the basketball players,’ ‘the boys,’ or ‘kids’; they were always ‘young men’ or ‘students’ or ‘student-athletes.’ ” Her gift. “I thought, how did she get [student-athletes] to sit down and study?

So I had to figure out how she, Sister Rose Ann Fleming, became the academic conscience of Xavier sports. I wanted to take the reader on that journey. She will talk with somebody, and after a while she will understand why they aren’t learning. Her attitude is that everybody wants to learn, we just have to figure out what that key is.”

Entwined with Xavier. “She wanted to

tell the story of Sister Rose Ann Fleming at Xavier University. She asked me to bring in a lot of other voices. The great thing, which made it easier, was that her memory was so thorough and complete and she could point me in the right direction. We had to weave that 30-year history into the story.”

Players say… “The word you’d hear over

SISTER’S STORY

A NEW BOOK CHRONICLES ROSE ANN FLEMING’S TENURE AT XU. BY MARC EMRAL

L

LAURA PULFER WAS SITTING IN HER HOME IN ST. MARY’S, OHIO, HAVING RETIRED after writing and editing for the Cincinnati Post, Cincinnati Enquirer, and Cincinnati Magazine when she was asked to write a book about Sister Rose Ann Fleming.

“Once you meet Sister, if she wants you to do something, you do it,” Pulfer says.

Needless to say, Pulfer ended up writing the book, Out of Habit, which has been published

by Wilmington, Ohio-based Orange Frazer Press.

What Xavier fans may know is that Sister has helped the men’s basketball program graduate every senior dating back to 1986. But there is plenty they don’t know that they will learn in this book.

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and over again about Sister is how she is so relentless. If they didn’t go to class she would hunt them down.”

Keeping it real. “There is no downside to

her. I followed her around for months and months. I traveled with the team on the road. I was with her colleagues, her friends, and her fellow religious [peers], and there was never a false note. There was never a young person who rolled their eyes. They are crazy about her. And the more you are with her, the better you like her.”

ABOUT THE BOOK Retail price: $24.95 Details: Hardcover, 224 pages Available online: www.xavier.edu/outofhabit Proceeds benefit: Sister Rose

Ann Fleming Endowment

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WARMUP

THE PLAYERS

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2 TOOLS READY, MOOD SET: Reynolds drapes his barber’s cape around Davis, who sits in front of the bathroom mirror in Reynolds’s apartment. Reynolds reaches for his Wahl clippers, and spends eight to 10 minutes carefully evening out Davis’s hair.

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3 IN A ZONE: Reynolds says cutting hair is a nice escape from the demands of college basketball practices and professors.

“It just takes me to a different place,” he says. “It’s like basketball when I’m on the court. I’m in a different zone where nothing else can affect what I’m focused on.”

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THE BARBER OF VICTORY PARKWAY JALEN REYNOLDS STYLES ON AND OFF THE COURT. BY TABARI MCCOY

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WHEN XAVIER SOPHOMORE FORWARD JALEN REYNOLDS TALKS ABOUT SIZING someone up and sharp cuts, it may not be about his play on the basketball court. It might instead be about his love of cutting hair.

The six-foot-nine Detroit native spent many days at his uncle Troy Harris’s barbershop when he was younger, kick-starting his hair-cutting enthusiasm. “My mom got tired of paying my uncle all the time, so my brother [Corey] just bought some clippers and said, ‘We’re going to try this out,’ ” Reynolds recalls. “He started cutting my hair, I started cutting his hair, and it just skyrocketed from there.”

That leads us to this moment. Reynolds, who started cutting friends’ hair when he was in eighth grade, now regularly cuts hair around Xavier’s campus. That includes his teammates.

“I’ve definitely approached [guys around campus],” Reynolds says. “I see black guys, white guys, all around campus and have said ‘Hey man, your hair’s looking a little nappy— come holler at me!’ ” That means you, Dee Davis.

Come with us as the senior guard and Musketeers teammate sits in Reynolds’s barber chair.

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4 MAN AT WORK: Reynolds spends 10 minutes meticulously tapering the sides and edges of Davis’s hairline. Asked about his previous experiences with Reynolds, Davis responds, “J’s my guy,” but notes that he’d “definitely” let Reynolds know if he makes a mistake. Reynolds is not worried about that. “I’m bigger than him,” he jokes.

5 FRIENDLY SNIP: A proponent of what he calls the “crispy cut,” where all lines and edges are precise, Reynolds says he would love to own his own small line of barber shops—possibly in Cincinnati—once his basketball playing days are over. Of course, he has an opinion on XU team hair. Best? Assistant coach Mike Pegues. “He’s always got a crispy lineup.” Worst? Freshman guard Edmond Sumner. “We’re both from Detroit; I don’t know why he hasn’t just asked me.”

6 SATISFIED CUSTOMER: Roughly 45 minutes after starting, Reynolds finishes by touching up Davis’s mustache and sideburns. Reynolds sweeps up as Davis takes in his teammate’s handiwork. How did Reynolds do? “I’m liking it right now,” Davis says. “You see how I’m smiling in the mirror. It’s very nice.”

7 ANYONE, ANYTIME: You don’t have to wear a Xavier jersey to get Reynolds to cut your hair. All you have to do is be on campus, in need of a haircut, and have some cash in your pocket. “I’ve always got my clippers ready when it’s time to do work.” Especially for one potential customer. Of all the people on campus, Reynolds says he’d most like to cut the hair of Xavier President Father Michael J. Graham, S.J.

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P H OT O G R A P H S B Y G R E G R U S T

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1 THE RIGHT STUFF: Before any cutting takes place, Reynolds cleans his four main pieces of equipment—his Wahl clippers, Andis razor, pick, and brush.

Davis, meanwhile, connects his iPhone to a speaker to pump out classic R&B tunes by the likes of Frankie Beverly, D’Angelo, and the late Roger Troutman. “I’m an old soul,” Davis says. “It’s way more relaxing than a barbershop.”

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THE PLAYERS

“I know what my dad did for me. I know what Shannon’s done. They’re both huge in my life. They kept me in school, kept me out of trouble, kept the ball in my hands.

They’re the reason I am where I am.”

CALIFORNIA KID IT TOOK A VILLAGE, BUT BRANDON RANDOLPH IS RIGHT WHERE HE’S SUPPOSED TO BE. BY DAVE MALASKA

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GROWING UP, BRANDON RANDOLPH DIDN’T NEED TO LOOK FAR FOR STRONG role models.

The Musketeers sophomore only had to look to his dad, Charles, a single father who drove a city bus until he was 71 years old to support his son. There was also Shannon Jones, the 33-year-old cousin who stepped in to help take care of Brandon when Charles was stricken with heart problems.

There were also coaches and family friends looking out for Randolph since he was a 9-year-old kid in Inglewood, California, dealing with his parents’ split.

“It really was all guys that sort of raised Brandon,” says Jones, who owns a limousine company in the Los Angeles suburb. “We all saw his potential, not just on the basketball court, but in life. We saw it as our job to help him reach that level.”

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Randolph could figure heavily into the Musketeers’ backcourt rotation this season. He appeared in 34 games last season with six starts. He averaged 2.6 points and 1.3 assists. He knows what his support system in California sacrificed for him, especially his father and cousin, and he doesn’t want to let them down.

“Every day, I either call them or one of them will call me,” Randolph says. “Or anytime something big comes up, I’m on the phone so I can tell them. It almost doesn’t seem real until I’ve told them.

“I know what my dad did for me. I know what Shannon’s done. They’re both huge in my life. They kept me in school, kept me out of trouble, kept the ball in my hands. They’re the reason I am where I am.”

Which very nearly wasn’t Victory Parkway.

During an early college visit, the fourstar Inglewood High standout committed to play closer to home at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. He did it on his own, admittedly a little caught up in the process.

Jones said he and Randolph’s dad heard about it on Twitter—and moved swiftly. “We saw it, called Brandon and said, ‘Whoa, don’t get carried away. You haven’t even visited other schools yet—explore your options,’ ” Jones says. Randolph backed off his verbal commitment—and with guidance from his dad and Jones—ultimately chose Xavier over Missouri.

“I really liked the campus and the family atmosphere,” he says. Academics, another strong focus he got from his family, were also a major factor. So, too, was the fact that Xavier is 1,900 miles away from home; but that became less of an issue once his family weighed in.

“It’s a long way from home, but I know my dad wanted me to go to the right place and be around good people no matter how far away it was,” Randolph says. “That’s what he worked so hard for, and we knew that that was [Xavier].

“And I know that Shannon’s there to take care of my father.”

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P H OT O G R A P H B Y D O U G C O C H R A N

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WARMUP

THE PLAYERS

“I started getting the feeling that it was time to leave. It was tough. You build relationships, you know? I went back and forth for a while, but then I decided to follow my heart and my heart was telling me it was time to leave.”

REMY ABELL KEPT HIS DECISION TO TRANSFER FROM EVERYONE. INCLUDING HIS FAMILY. BY DAVE MALASKA

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EIGHTEEN MONTHS AGO, REMY ABELL’S DECISION TO BECOME A MUSKETEER wasn’t all that tough. It was a lot easier than the decision to transfer from Indiana in April 2013 and the fallout that followed.

“I didn’t let anybody know about my decision, not even my family,” Abell says. He quietly made his choice, informed the school, and waited for the reaction—especially from his education-focused mother, who heard the news from TV reports.

“For a few days after word got out, I didn’t answer calls from my mom,” he says. “I just knew she was going to be upset with me. Eventually, I answered. It wasn’t good…but she’s happy with my decision now.”

The six-foot-four guard, XU’s second Indiana transfer since 2008 (when Jordan Crawford made the move), says the decision to leave IU was a struggle.

Midway through his sophomore year, despite appearances in 68 games and two NCAA Tournament runs, he wasn’t getting as much playing time as he had hoped. He averaged 4 points and 12.5 minutes a game as a sophomore.

“I started getting the feeling that it was time to leave,” Abell says. “It was tough. You build relationships, you know? I went back and forth for a while, but then I decided to follow my heart and my heart was telling me it was time to leave.” With little fanfare, the Louisville native informed the school and went back to his apartment.

After receiving permission from IU, Xavier was the first school to call Abell.

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The Musketeers had recruited Abell out of Louisville Eastern High School two years earlier, and now XU assistant Travis Steele was asking if the rumors of Abell’s departure were true.

They were. Steele told Abell that Xavier would love to have him.

“It’s a funny thing,” Abell says. “Coming out of high school, I wanted to come to Xavier but things just didn’t work out.

It’s a great campus, a family atmosphere, a winning program—everything I wanted.

“Things worked out, and they got me the second time around.”

After sitting out last season because of transfer rules, it’s expected that Abell’s scoring and playing time will be markedly better than his final season as a Hoosier.

That’s good, but not his goal.

“Ultimately, I just want to graduate,” he says. “I want to earn a good degree and have strong relationships here. That’ll make my mom happy. The rest will take care of itself.”

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FROM IU TO XU

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THE PLAYERS

“It was great to go into the locker room and see the pictures where [Taru Tuukkanen and Reeta Piipari] both scored 1,000 points when they were here, but I’m not thinking about that; I’m just thinking about helping a team to succeed and get wins.”

COMING TO AMERICA

FRESHMAN FORWARD ANNIINA ÄIJÄNEN CONTINUES XAVIER’S FINLAND TRADITION. BY TABARI MCCOY

H

HOME TO 5.2 MILLION PEOPLE, FINLAND IS KNOWN FOR EXPORTING TECHNOLOGY for mobile phones, paper and pulp, chemicals, and timber. In regards to Xavier University, however, Finland has also exported several women’s basketball players.

Freshman forward Anniina Äijänen hopes to add to Xavier’s Finnish legacy.

Originally from Tampere, Finland, Äijänen (pronounced eye-yen-en) is the fifth Finn to join the Musketeers in the past 20 years. She follows former Xavier players Susanna Stromberg (1999 graduate), Taru Tuukkanen (2001), and Reeta Piipari (2003). The latter two are 1,000-point club members who helped lead the 2000–01 team to a 31–3 record and an Elite Eight appearance in the NCAA Tournament. Point guard Elina Pasola signed with Xavier in 1998 but transferred to Catawba College in 2000.

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“I’VE ALWAYS WANTED TO STUDY AND PLAY BASKETBALL. IN FINLAND, IT’S REALLY HARD TO COMBINE THOSE.” Äijänen, who played with Tuukkanen and Piipari recently as members of Finland’s Senior National basketball team, credits her predecessors for her arrival at Xavier.

“I’ve always wanted to study and play basketball,” Äijänen says. “In Finland, it’s really hard to combine those. When I got the possibility to leave to play and study, I’ve got to use it.… Taru told me about her experience here and how at first it was a struggle, but when she got used to it, it was the time of her life.”

First visiting the U.S. at age 14 while playing for a Finland club team, Äijänen had only seen Cincinnati in pictures before arriving on campus in July. The admittedly shy Äijänen isn’t sure what she wants to study yet, but looks forward to improving her English and learning about Cincinnati.

“From what I’ve heard, this is big but not too big,” she says.

Tuukkanen is hopeful Äijänen will not be the last Finnish player to play for the Musketeers, who took a summer trip to Finland in 2000 to play four games, including against the Finnish National Team.

“Anniina is a player with a lot of potential; she is a post who can handle the ball well, shoot the 3, and make moves back to the basket,” Tuukkanen says. “As a person she is nice, friendly, humble, and ambitious. She needs to get some cockiness and toughness here to become even better.

I have tried to prepare her the best I can for life at Xavier, but everything is different now so she will just have to live it and make her own XU experience.”

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WARMUP

WARMUP

THE NEW KIDS

GETTING TO KNOW YOU

BY MARC EMRAL

#10

#25

#0

#5

REMY ABELL

ANNIINA ÄIJÄNEN

LARRY AUSTIN JR.

TREVON BLUIETT

Significance to your jersey No. 10? I had 10 all my life because when I started playing basketball I started with 10; grade school, middle school, high school—always tried to keep that number. That number always seemed to fit me.

Your mentor or idol? Victor Oladipo [former Indiana University star, the second pick in the 2013 NBA draft by the Orlando Magic]. I played with him for two years [at IU], and being around him really helped me learn a lot, on and off the court.

Just seeing his work ethic and what he did in the classroom really inspired me, and I really looked up to him. He kind of took me under his wing and helped me through the first two years of college. I really do look up to him and the dream he is living; I want to live that dream.

I’ve seen him put in that work so I know it can be possible.

If you could have dinner with someone dead or alive, who would it be? My uncle on my mom’s side, Uncle Mark.

He passed away last year. He taught me a lot growing up. He was always at my games and always gave me encouragement and support and told me to just keep praying and keep staying humble and staying in the books, that basketball is going to come.

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Why did you choose Xavier?

I didn’t do so well in the European championships [she is from Finland] because the first four games I was sick. In Europe, if you want to get to college you have to do well with your national team and I didn’t do so well because of the illness. But I got recommended by the Finnish coach, and the Xavier coaches came to visit and I chose Xavier.

Who inspires you? Of course, many people. I appreciate very much my parents and the sacrifices they have made for me to be able to come here and do what I want. And other players inspire me with what they do on the court, and I look up to them.

Pre-game rituals? I have to take shots before the game. I don’t come two hours before the game, but after I put my gear on I go to the court even though, on my last team, some players would wait for the coaches to come and talk. I would go to the court and take some shots by myself.

What would you like to change about yourself?

I think I could work on being more outgoing and social with people and talking more—and focusing on one thing at one time.

Why did you choose Xavier?

I de-committed from Tennessee and chose Xavier because it felt like home. I only took this one unofficial visit, and I felt like the coaching staff and the players wanted me to come.

My parents really enjoyed the visit as well. The recruiting class is a great group of guys.

Who inspires you? My parents. They work hard at everything. Everything they do, everything they want they go out and get it. They are dedicated to what they do.

They have love and passion for everything and they always take care of their family.

Superstitions? If I am on a roll, I figure out what I’ve done and I try to go back to what I’ve been doing and keep trying to do it. And then if I lose I just lose it.

Pre-game rituals? Just listen to music. I try to take a nap.

Just be relaxed and don’t overthink anything.

What do you want to get out of your college experience?

An education and a degree. I also want to win games here, win championships. Be a better person on and off the court.

Who inspires you? My dad.

He works non-stop. I look up to him and I’ve been looking up to him since I was little. He’s kind of been my mentor throughout my whole basketball career.

Just to see him being a hard worker, not taking any days off and going out and providing for what he needs to provide for.

He used to work at a medicine company, overnight job. He’s been a barber for seven years.

He also refs some games, and he’s been my AAU coach since second grade.

Who do you model your game after? Carmelo Anthony. We kind of have the same body type. He is two inches taller than me but we’re not extremely quick type of players, so I’ve always wanted to model my game after somebody who fits my style.

What do you want to get out of your college experience? I definitely want to get a degree and be able to graduate; that’s most important. Second, as far as athletics go, is to get a couple of championships, whether it is the conference championship or national championships. And to be able to play basketball after college; just as long as I am blessed to play I’m fine with it.

What makes you laugh?

Anything, to be honest. There’s not too much effort to make me laugh.

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SPEND SOME TIME WITH XU’S NEW BASKETBALL PLAYERS.

THE NEW KIDS

WARMUP

#12

#22

#1

#30

JADA BYRD

ERICA DAWSON

KINDELL FINCHER

RAESHAUN GAFFNEY

Why did you choose Xavier?

Everybody made me feel at home, and that was pretty much a major factor in choosing this school.

If you had a walk-up song, what would it be? The team wants me to come out to “I Believe I Can Fly” because of my name.

If you could have dinner with someone dead or alive, who would it be? Abraham Lincoln. I just want to know his insights on everything, why he chose to do everything he did.

Your favorite sport to play besides basketball? Softball. I grew up playing it with my family. It is pretty much a second sport. If I didn’t play basketball I’d probably play softball.

Basketball player you like to watch? Carmelo Anthony. I love his demeanor on the court.

No matter what, he is going to keep control of the game, and he has high intensity.

Best character trait? My humor. If someone is down, that’s maybe when I can help to pick them up. If someone can make you laugh, it just makes your life so much better. Live, love, laugh.

What do you want to get out of your college experience?

I would like to continue playing after college, preferably overseas.

What makes you laugh? Cartoons. I’m a kid at heart. Any good jokes, comics. My favorite cartoons are Looney Tunes.

XavierNationMagazine.com

Why did you choose Xavier?

I chose Xavier because I loved the campus and the facilities.

I love the size of the school. I had a really good connection with the coaches during the review process.

Significance to your jersey No. 22? That is the number I’ve worn since elementary school, and I’ve stuck with it.

Who do you model your game after? [Former Musketeer] Ashley Wanninger because she’s a shooter, and that is the game I play.

Best character trait? My work ethic; I got that from my dad. He’s always pushed me to give 100 percent in all I do, and I think that has built up over the years.

What do you want to get out of your college experience?

I haven’t chosen a major yet.

But since I have five years I’d like to work for my master’s, so that is my goal right now. My dad wants me to coach, but I have the playing gene more so than the coaching gene. I like coaching in camps and I like working with the kids, but I don’t know if necessarily I want to do that.

What would you like to change about yourself? Be more outspoken about things, speak up a little more. At times in practice coaches have said I need to step up and be a leader for the team.

If you could have dinner with someone dead or alive, who would it be? Michael Jordan. I would want to know everything outside of basketball, his life and what it took to get where he is at, and how he stays mentally focused. What made him decide to go harder to make his high school basketball team; who encouraged him and why; his faith, Christ, or anything on what motivated him.

Favorite sport to watch?

Football. Just every aspect of it—how hard they go, the trash talk, everything that you hear.

The guys you see…under the helmet—you see their number on the field, you don’t see their face. But off the field in their interviews they are not who they seem to be under the helmets. In reality they have heart, they have a personality, and they are generous.

What do you want to get out of your college experience?

If I get hurt I’ll still have my education, so I just want to make sure my education is down pat. I want to be a coroner.

But I think I want to go back to school and do that. I don’t think it would be a good idea to do basketball and that at the same time. I want to come back to school and get my MD.

Significance to your jersey No. 30? My dad was No. 30 and he played for [University of] Minnesota.

If you had a walk-up song, what would it be? “Winner”

by Jamie Foxx and Justin Timberlake, because some of the lyrics are about how you can be knocked down but you don’t let it affect you because you are “lookin’ at a winner.”

Favorite sport to watch? It would probably be track. I like seeing the 400, because that is what I used to run. I like seeing how people strategize the race, but you have to run all-out during the race. [I like] seeing people dig deep toward the end of the race and kind of find the way to go get it and cross the finish line first.

Do you have any pre-game rituals? I have to listen to a specific song. I don’t have to play it over and over, but I have to make sure I listen to it: “All Falls Down,” by Kanye West, because it was a song me and my dad would play before every game when I was little driving to the games.

What makes you laugh?

My mom makes me laugh. She is a character. Her smile is so bright and when she smiles it makes me smile. We joke around a lot. My whole entire family are characters. I just grew up smiling a lot. Even when I was down my mom picked me up and made things better.

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THE NEW KIDS

#12

#13

#55

#54

MALEEKA KYNARD

MAKINDE LONDON

J.P. MACURA

SEAN O’MARA

Why did you choose Xavier?

It is a really good academic school. I wanted to play my last year of basketball here, and get my master’s. It is an awesome opportunity.

Why did you choose Xavier?

I wanted to go to a basketballfirst school and I felt like Xavier had everything I needed athletically and academically to reach my full potential.

Significance to your jersey No. 12? I was 2 at Ohio State University, and I decided since I am going to Xavier it’s a new beginning for me.

Significance to your jersey No. 13? My AAU coach, Dominique Redding, she wore 13 at the University of Tennessee and she had a great impact teaching me and my teammates in AAU life lessons. It wasn’t just about basketball, it was life lessons, and she built a relationship with my family.

Who inspires you? My dad.

He raised me and my sister and pushed us to be good people.

He raised us alone, and he’s just amazing to me.

If you could have dinner with anyone dead or alive, who would it be and why? [Boxing champion] Floyd Mayweather.

I admire his work ethic. He was determined to be great. He goes hard at his craft and tries hard to be the best he can be.

Favorite non-basketball athletes to watch? My cousin Eric Kynard. He’s a high jumper and won the silver medal at the Olympics. And Floyd Mayweather.

What do you want to get out of your college experience?

I want to meet new people and build new relationships and a new network and make a career path. I want to enjoy this year.

Are you more silly or serious? A little of both. I know when to cut it off. I am not too serious that I can’t enjoy life but not too silly where I take everything as a joke.

Who inspires you?

My dad, Robert London, because he has worked so hard for me and I just want to be able to pay him back…just by working hard for him. My AAU coach [Dominique Redding], she taught me so much. I see a lot of AAU guys, and they talk about their AAU teams and it was fun playing in national stuff, but it was more than that with her. It was building relationships and teaching things I will keep with me all my life, and it will help me make decisions later on in life.

Favorite sport to play besides basketball? Ping pong and pool. You can’t beat me. In the dorm [at Montverde Academy in Florida] last year all we had was ping pong and pool.

I got good at it. It was competitive and active.

What would you change about yourself? Shrink so I don’t hit my head on the door.

[He’s 6-foot-10.]

Significance to your jersey No. 55? Just to be different.

If you had a walk-up song, what would it be? “Pills N Potions” by Nicki Minaj. I just like it.

Basketball player you like to watch? [Oklahoma City Thunder star] Kevin Durant, because he scores so easily, and I think he is the purest scorer in the NBA. Non-basketball athlete you like to watch? Peyton Manning. He’s literally his own team.

He helps everyone out and he’s a leader, and he just makes it look so easy out there.

Superstitions? I walk out the same door when I come in here every time. I walk in the same door and leave the same door.

Pre-game rituals? In high school I went to Jimmy John’s before every game, but I don’t know if I’ll have the chance to do that here.

What do you want to get out of your college experience?

I just want to be a better basketball player on the court and be a better man off the court.

Just grow as a human and become a leader. And I want to get a degree.

Are you more silly or serious? I’m silly with everything except when I need to be serious. When I’m on the basketball court I’m serious. If it is a setting when you should be silly, I’m always silly.

Why did you choose Xavier?

I am really excited about the BIG EAST Conference. I think the next few years, even now, it is going to be one of the powerhouse conferences in the nation.

Significance to your jersey No. 54? It is my mom’s number.

She played college basketball at Allegheny College in [Meadville] Pennsylvania, DIII. Both of my parents played there, but my mom was a little better.

If you could have dinner with someone dead or alive, who would it be? John Wooden.

We got to read his book in our first class here, and I kept the book and highlighted it up with all these different sayings that I thought were really motivational or just ways to live your life. I think getting to talk to him would be really insightful [about] how to form your life and take the right steps on where you want to go.

Superstitions? I never cross my shoes in my bag—left shoe is on the left side, right is on the right—and then my ankle braces go into my shoes. That’s pretty much as wild as I get.

Pre-game rituals? Slow jams on my headphones; it just relaxes me, gets me focused in, ready for the game. I don’t need to get all juiced up, I’ll do that in warmups.

What do you want to get out of your college experience?

A degree. Memories to last a lifetime. Relationships. Just a good experience.

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P H OT O G R A P H S B Y G R E G R U S T

WARMUP

THE NEW KIDS

WARMUP

AT A GLANCE

MEN’S BASKETBALL NEWCOMERS REMY ABELL 6-4, guard Louisville, Kentucky

LARRY AUSTIN JR. #4

#24

#0

EDMOND SUMNER

MARTHA THOMPSON

MARQUIA TURNER

Why did you choose Xavier?

It was the perfect fit for me, playing-style wise—an uptempo style.

Who inspires you? My mom.

I just see what a hard worker she is, and I want to work just as hard.

If you had a walk-up song, what would it be? “Just a Friend” by Mario. I just like the song.

Superstitions? I don’t like to wear anything I didn’t wear [before]. I will wear a sleeve in a game, and if I miss my first shot I will take it off. I don’t like to wear unnecessary accessories.

Best character trait? I am an outgoing person, trustworthy.

What would you change about yourself? When I first meet somebody I am very quiet until I get to know them.

Are you more silly or serious? Silly. I’m a serious person at times, when the situation needs to be serious, but other than that I am a silly person.

Your mentor or idol? My siblings. They understand me.

Since I am the youngest, and they were college athletes as well, they teach me how to go through life, things they have already been through.

My idol is [Los Angeles Lakers star] Kobe Bryant—I like his determination, his leadership, his personality.

If you could have dinner with someone dead or alive, who would it be? My grandmother. She’s my best friend.

She passed away when I was in the eighth grade. We had a special bond.

Best character trait? I’m passionate. When I do something I put my all into it. When I love, you can tell. And when I play basketball, you can tell I love basketball.

What do you want to get out of your college experience?

I want to learn how to own a business. I don’t want to work under anyone. And I want to learn how to be a leader.

What makes you laugh? Everything. It can be the smallest thing and I’d laugh about it.

Why did you choose Xavier?

I like the environment here. I didn’t want to go somewhere too big and this campus size is perfect. The tradition here for basketball is very good. And I’ve known a lot of people on the team for a long time. It was very comfortable for me.

Significance to your jersey No. 0? I’m starting over here at Xavier and I thought why not start over with 0? And I’ve always found 0 very cool.

Who inspires you? Mom and Dad inspire me a lot. My mom, for a long time, raised me as a single parent, and my stepdad—I consider him my dad since he’s been around for so long. They were both very good in high school and they both pushed me to be the best I can be, so that’s important to me.

And I play for myself as well as for them.

If you had a walk-up song, what would it be? I listen to country, so all of my songs are country. “Yeah,” by Joe Nichols.

I love the song, I listen to it daily, so it would probably be a good way to walk out.

Non-basketball athletes you like to watch? Peyton Manning. He’s very consistent to me. His body movement is intriguing to me. He’s very precise.

What would you change about yourself? I do need to better my patience, and that would be on and off the court. I think I would just need to perfect some things in basketball.

6-2, guard Springfield, Illinois

TREVON BLUIETT 6-6, forward, Indianapolis, Indiana

MAKINDE LONDON 6-10, forward Nashville, Tennessee

J.P. MACURA 6-5, guard Lakeville, Minnesota

SEAN O’MARA 6-10, forward/center Lisle, Illinois

EDMOND SUMNER 6-5, guard Detroit, Michigan

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL NEWCOMERS ANNINA ÄIJÄNEN 6-2, forward Tampere, Finland

JADA BYRD 5-9, guard Lithonia, Georgia

ERICA DAWSON 5-8, guard Marietta, Ohio

KINDELL FINCHER 5-9, guard Fort Wayne, Indiana

RAESHAUN GAFFNEY 5-8, guard Fairfield, Ohio

MALEEKA KYNARD 5-8, guard Toledo, Ohio

MARTHA THOMPSON 5-8, guard Solon, Ohio

MARQUIA TURNER 5-6, guard North Canton, Ohio

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XavierNationMagazine.com

XU’S MATT STAINBROOK HAS HIS SERIOUS SIDE AND, WELL, A SILLY SIDE. BY // GREGG DOYEL PHOTOGRAPHS BY // GREG RUST

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“I don’t know why I’m this way,” Matt Stainbrook says, uttering what could pass for an epitaph.

What is “this way”? Well, it’s complicated. Stainbrook is complicated. Smart people usually are, and people don’t come a lot smarter than this. Stainbrook was named to the 10-member Division I scholar-athlete team after graduating with a 3.35 GPA with a degree in finance and getting started on his master’s degree.

“Matt’s a smart guy,” says Tom Eiser, Xavier’s associate AD for communications.

“Almost dangerously.”

Mack says Stainbrook is one of the rare players who knows not just his responsibility on every play, but also the responsibilities of the other four players on the floor.

“He doesn’t have to be on the court, ei-

XavierNationMagazine.com

PHOTO GRAPHS BY GREG RUST

HE GOOFIEST PLAYER ON THE XAVIER MEN’S BASKETBALL TEAM HAS BIG wavy hair and a big wavy body. And goggles.

The goofiest player at Xavier talks to anybody and everybody, wears basketball shoes until they’re falling apart and a coach has to throw them away, and dresses up like Santa Claus at Christmas. The goofiest player at Xavier is never serious, never dull, never quiet.

Matt Stainbrook is nothing like that guy.

Even if Matt Stainbrook is that guy.

Because the most serious player on the Xavier men’s basketball team is a loner. He shows up for practice alone, dresses quietly, finds a basket and shoots by himself. If a teammate joins him, this guy looks for another basket. A basket where he can be alone.

The most serious player on the Xavier men’s basketball team is a finance major who interned last summer downtown at First Financial Bank in the corporate finance department, working on activities-based costing, a guy so quiet and so driven that he makes Xavier coach Chris Mack nuts. Talk to your teammates more, Mack tells the guy. Be part of the team. Be a leader. But the most serious player at Xavier just wants to improve so badly that he gets caught up in what he’s doing, what he can do to get better, and isolates himself emotionally from everyone else.

Matt Stainbrook is nothing like that guy.

Even if Matt Stainbrook is that guy.

“BASKETBALL IS A JOB TO ME. SCHOOL, THAT’S A JOB TO ME. I’M STUDYING

BY MYSELF, AND I’M SHOOTING

BY MYSELF. I’M NOT THERE TO TALK AND MESS AROUND. I’M THERE TO GET STUFF DONE.”

PHOTO GRAPHS BY (LEF T) DOUG COCHRAN; (RIGHT) BOB STEVENS

ABOVE: Xavier student-athletes partner with the Make-A-Wish Foundation to help raise money for 6-year-old Landyn, who suffers from spina bifida and wishes to go to Walt Disney World. The Student-Athlete Advisory Committee spearheaded the effort which raised more than $5,000 for Make-A-Wish to help Landyn’s wish come true. Landyn and his siblings pose with Matt Stainbrook following Xavier’s victory over Providence at Cintas Center last February.

ther,” Mack says. “If he’s sitting there watching five guys go through a play, he has it all figured out pretty fast.”

What Stainbrook doesn’t have figured out is the origin of his unique personality— and it’s not unique in the way that everyone is a special snowflake, individual and one-ofa-kind. No, his personality is unique in the way that he’s kind of a weird guy. Different from most folks; not different in a bad way, but different in a way that stands out. Different in that the Matt Stainbrook who dresses like a dork and sits teammates on his lap for a team video at Christmas and pretty much goes out of his way to draw attention to himself is also the Matt Stainbrook who plans to work a button-down job at a bank and keeps to himself and pretty much goes out of his way not to draw attention to himself.

XavierNationMagazine.com

There are two Stainbrooks, see. There’s the guy who identifies as a basketball player and student, and the guy who doesn’t. The guy who identifies as an athlete and student takes himself very seriously—and the guy who doesn’t…doesn’t.

The guy who plays and goes to school, he doesn’t want to be bothered. He plays well with others, sure—but only if he has to.

“Study groups, big projects with a lot of people—that’s not for me,” Stainbrook says.

“When I go to work, I’m more into myself.

Basketball is a job to me. School, that’s a job to me. I’m studying by myself, and I’m shooting by myself. I’m not there to talk and mess around. I’m there to get stuff done.”

He got it done last season to the tune of 10.6 points, 7.4 rebounds, 2.2 assists, and 0.9 blocks per game, helping the Musketeers

to 21 wins and a spot in the 2014 NCAA Tournament and helping himself to a spot on the All-Big East honorable mention list.

That was Stainbrook’s first season on the court at Xavier, and the way he got there, like so many things with Stainbrook, is a story.

He was a transfer candidate from Western Michigan during the summer of 2012 when he had a sit-down with Mack. In terms of basketball, the Xavier coach liked what he’d seen of Stainbrook at Western Michigan and during a workout at the Cintas Center.

But in other ways? Like the way Stainbrook wore his hair in a bushy afro, or the way he covered his knees and elbows in pads, or his playing weight of 320 pounds or his oldschool Rec-Specs, all of which led to Stainbrook’s nickname: Mrs. Doubtfire? Mack didn’t like what he saw at all.

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“I’M BRANDING MYSELF. WHEN I LEAVE HERE, I WANT PEOPLE TO SAY, ‘MATT STAINBROOK? HE’S A NICE GUY. APPROACHABLE.’ ”

“I’m not into that ‘look great, play great’ stuff,” Mack says. “So I sat down with Matt and talked to him about it.”

Here, according to both, is how their conversation went: Mack: “About your hair. You’re going to have to cut it.”

Stainbrook: “No problem.”

Mack: “And your elbow pads and knee pads. Those have to go.”

Stainbrook: “No problem.”

Mack: “You won’t play here at 320 pounds. If you come here, you’re going to have to get on a program, take it serious, and drop about 50 pounds.”

Stainbrook: “No problem.”

Mack: “And the goggles—they have to go.”

Stainbrook: “But Coach, I need the goggles because I have a lazy eye.”

Mack: “The goggles stay!”

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And so did Stainbrook, becoming at once Xavier’s goofiest player. During his redshirt season of 2012–13, when he was ineligible as an underclassman transfer, Stainbrook developed a campus following for his sartorial silliness. To entertain himself during a monotonous year without game action, he decided to dress up for all those games he spent on the bench. It started with a decades-old jacket from his grandfather, a horrendously out-ofstyle tweed blazer with elbow patches. Stainbrook raided his own closet for shirts, lime green or salmon or something equally awful, and topped it off with a bowtie. At first he was buying clip-ons, but by midseason he had taught himself how to tie them.

Stainbrook says the get-ups were calculated, an effort to encourage attention and conversation.

“If I’m not playing or studying, I want

people to talk to me and come up to me,” Stainbrook says. “I’m branding myself. When I leave here, I want people to say, ‘Matt Stainbrook? He’s a nice guy. Approachable.’ ” It worked. A member of Xavier’s a cappella group—the Acabellas—approached Stainbrook on campus last year and invited him to a concert. Sure, why not. So he goes, and what do you know? The Acabellas called Stainbrook out of the crowd, put him in a chair on stage and serenaded him with the song, “You Don’t Know You’re Beautiful.”

“Loved every bit of it,” he says.

Matt has that unique quality a lot of people don’t have,” Eiser says. “He doesn’t mind laughing at himself.”

No joke. The way Stainbrook dressed for games at Western Michigan, padded and goggled like George Mikan, was calculated.

He looked like a dork because he wanted to

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PHOTO GRAPH BY BOB STEVENS

RIGHT: Matt Stainbrook, teammates and other tourists pose with the Xavier flag in front of the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, during the Musketeers’ trip in August.

STATS O N S TA I N B R O O K

1,027 CAREER POINTS (351 AT XU; 676 AT WESTERN MICHIGAN)

15

CAREER-HIGH REBOUNDS, VS. EVANSVILLE (DEC. 10, 2013)

7.4

TEAM-HIGH REBOUNDING AVERAGE

PHOTO GRAPH BY CLIFF JENKINS

LAST SEASON look like a dork.

“I loved the fact that I’d step on the court, and the other [center] would look at me like, ‘I’m guarding this guy?’ ” Stainbrook says.

“That was worth an easy bucket every time.”

Until the other center figured out the dork could play. And he can. Stainbrook—who played last season at about 270 pounds and hopes to be even lighter this season—will play professionally somewhere next year, possibly in the NBA, though he’s prepared to go overseas. He likes the idea of travel, of learning new things. These days when he’s not in school or practice he’s likely to be watching Food Network, searching the network’s website for recipes, or whipping up something with his arsenal of small kitchen appliances.

“Steamers, blenders, panini griller, whatever,” he says. “You name it, I’ve got it.”

Stainbrook goes to the zoo and the art

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museum and Reds games. When a local restaurant is featured on the Food Network, Stainbrook goes and eats there.

“I want to branch out, find out different things,” he says. “I enjoy finding out what Cincinnati has to offer.”

He’s curious and fearless and maybe a little bit bizarre, this guy—and he swears those days are coming to an end.

Because there’s another Matt Stainbrook.

And at some point, that one’s going to make his move.

“After I’m done playing professionally, I’m probably going to get a job in a bank or somewhere like that,” he says. “Hopefully I’ll have been active for 25, 30 years of my life. I think if I spend 10 years sitting behind a desk, I’ll be OK with it. At that point, I’ll be OK with relaxing, not being on my feet, using my brain.”

It’s a smart brain. Almost dangerously so.

15

BOW TIES HE OWNS

45

POUNDS HE HAS LOST SINCE COMING TO XAVIER

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| X AV I E R N AT I O N 3 3

BALANCING BY // GREGG DOYEL

PHOTOGRAPHS BY // BOB STEVENS

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ACT

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C in

T

Chris Mack and Brian Neal have a lot of balls in the air, on and off the court.

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BEHIND EVERY COLLEGE BASKETBALL COACH—certainly, behind every college basketball coach with a solid family—is a great and strong spouse. That probably sounds like an opinion, but it’s pretty much a fact.

“She’s been the anchor,” Brian Neal says of his wife, Amy. “I can’t imagine being her.

She’s had to hold the family together. Honestly, I don’t know how she does it.”

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Adds Chris Mack, speaking of his wife, Christi: “She raises the kids.”

Chris Mack says that a lot admiringly and a little mournfully, because he—like Brian Neal—isn’t happy to be missing out on the little stuff, the annoying stuff, the stuff so many parents might take for granted or wish they didn’t have to do all the time: Carpooling. Making dinner.

Helping with homework. Getting the kids to bed. Doing it again tomorrow and the next day and on and on. And on. And on.

“She raises the kids,” Chris Mack says again, “but I don’t want to be this missing-in-action father.”

Here, Christi Mack interrupts her husband as they sit in their living room and comes to his aid.

“You miss a lot,” she tells her husband, then turns her focus to the interviewer. “He does. But he tries his best, and he makes the kids feel a part of the

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PHOTO GRAPH BY BOB STEVENS

T

HEY DON’T. THAT’S THE ANSWER TO YOUR QUESTION, IF WE’RE going to get right to the point. And we are. So go ahead, ask away: How do Xavier’s Chris Mack and Brian Neal, with all the time demands of being Division I head basketball coaches—recruiting, coaching, traveling, hobnobbing with boosters and media—successfully meet the demands of being a husband to a loving wife, and a father to their young children?

They don’t.

Don’t get this wrong: They try. They try their hardest, and their wives and their kids know it. But they don’t—they can’t—run a Division I college basketball program in the way it’s supposed to be run while also successfully meeting every demand of being a father.

And it tears them up inside. Both of them.

“I’ve probably missed everything,” says Mack, who coaches the Xavier men.

“I have missed everything,” says Neal, who coaches the Xavier women.

PHOTO GRAPHS COURTESY OF THE MACK FAMILY

FAR LEFT: Christi and Chris Mack with Lainee, 9, and Hailee, 8. The Macks are expecting their third child in December. CENTER: Chris takes Hailee, left, and Lainee jet skiing in Clearwater, Fla. LEFT: Hailee’s first communion. BELOW: Lainee heads off on a Xavier road trip.

Xavier family, and that’s so important. He’ll pick them up after school, take them to shootaround. They’re involved. They know it.”

Chris and Christi Mack have two kids— Lainee is 9, Hailee 8—with a third on the way in December. This one’s a boy. Chris Mack doesn’t even bother playing it cool about adding a boy to their family.

“He’ll call me and ask how I’m doing,” Christi says, “and then he’ll ask, ‘And how’s Chris Junior?’ ” Brian and Amy Neal have four kids—Allison, 17; Madison, 15; Emma, 10; and Max, 8—and Brian says the wide age range is obvious in the way everyone interacts in those moments when they’re all somehow home, which almost never happens given that Allison plays basketball, Madison and Emma are cheerleaders and Amy is their coach, Max is a baseball player, and Brian coaches at Xavier.

“Two teens and two younger kids,” he says.

“The teens are in their own world. I used to be

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on the driveway with the older kids playing ball.

We’d shoot on the driveway. Now, if I’m tossing a ball with Max or out there doing something with Emma, one of the older kids is likely to be sitting on the trampoline on her iPad.” Four kids, ages 8 to 17—that’s a handful for any parent, much less a parent who’s also a coach trying to transition his Division I basketball program into the BIG EAST Conference.

It’s a job that requires a strong person as the mother. And the Neals have that.

“I kind of run the family,” Amy Neal says, “and he runs the team.”

“I TRY TO GET HOME AS MUCH AS I CAN.” — C H R I S M AC K

THEY TRY, THOUGH. These dads, these husbands—these coaches—they try so hard to be everything to everybody.

To their players, Chris Mack and Brian Neal are coaches and mentors, father figures and leaders. They spend the NCAA-allowed

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—BRIAN NEAL ( TA L K I N G A B O U T HIS WIFE, AMY)

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for his 8-year-old’s baseball team. Neal doesn’t make it to every game or practice, and sometimes he’s late when he is there, but he’s doing the best he can and everyone involved—Max, Amy, the team’s other coaches and players— understand. And a couple times a week Brian gets to do one of his favorite activities of all: heading out to the cul-de-sac with Max to play catch and work on a few drills.

“I have a team jersey and everything,” Brian says, and although he is talking over the telephone, you can almost hear him smile.

Another victory for Brian Neal, family man, has been attending each of his children’s first communions. The first couple of kids, it worked out pretty well—but a few years ago, Emma’s first communion was going to be dicey. What else was going on that night?

Oh, nothing much. Just the Xavier basketball team’s annual, end-of-the-season banquet.

Brian Neal made his choice and hasn’t questioned it.

“I missed our banquet,” he says.

“I remember the [schedule] conflict,” adds his wife, Amy. “And I remember him making it to the communion.”

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PHOTO GRAPH (LEF T) BY BOB STEVENS; ALL OTHER PHOTO GRAPHS COURTESY OF THE NE AL FAMILY

“I CAN’T IMAGINE BEING HER. SHE’S HAD TO HOLD THE FAMILY TOGETHER.”

20 hours per week with their players during the season, and they spend double or triple that time working on their players’ behalf in other ways: planning, marketing, recruiting new talent.

And when they get home? Boy, do Chris Mack and Brian Neal try.

“I try to get home as much as I can,” Mack says, and isn’t that the saddest thing you ever read?

And if that isn’t, try this: “You just feel guilty,” Neal says. “I do what I can get done in both areas and try not to spend a lot of time reflecting—because if I do, workwise and home-wise, it’s tough. I want so badly to be successful as a coach. I want to be a good dad and husband. But I can’t do it all. Something has to give.”

Sometimes, though, nothing has to give.

Sometimes, they are the coach they want to be and the father/husband they have to be.

And those are the times they remember and celebrate.

For Neal, one such time is Max’s youth baseball games. That’s when the Xavier head women’s basketball coach is an assistant coach

FAR LEFT: The Neal family – Madison, 15, Brian, Max, 8, Amy, Emma, 10, and Allison, 17. TOP CENTER: Trip to the Virgin Islands last November with the Xavier women’s basketball team. BOTTOM CENTER: Christmas 2013.

ABOVE: The family celebrates Brian’s birthday.

Says Brian: “Those types of things, the family-church things, certainly take precedence.”

For Chris Mack, the big-time wins at home sometimes don’t come at the actual house. Look, he’s the highest-paid person at Xavier, directing a multimillion-dollar, revenue-generating enterprise, and as such he’s expected to produce at a high level. And he has, by the way, winning 111 games in five years, with four NCAA Tournament appearances, two trips to the Sweet 16, and two regular-season conference titles. Winning like that requires a commitment that doesn’t allow Mack to be the family man he wants to be, and while his family understands—“I get it,” Christi says, “and the girls totally get it”—he still comes through with some major W’s on the home front.

One such W came last year when Xavier was recruiting a high school senior named Sean O’Mara and Chris Mack needed to get to eastern Illinois to watch him play a football game. (The sixfoot-nine O’Mara was a left tackle; scary,

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right?) Mack reviewed his itinerary and saw the private plane would take him to an airport in Gary, Indiana, and…wait a minute. Gary, Indiana? That’s where the King of Pop, Michael Jackson, grew up. And Michael Jackson is little Hailee Mack’s favorite singer!

Hailee made that trip to Gary. She and Dad visited Michael Jackson’s boyhood home in the afternoon, and that night they went to Sean O’Mara’s football game. And this story has another happy ending: Sean O’Mara makes his Xavier debut this year.

This year Mack surprised his other daughter, Lainee, on her birthday by picking her up early at school and taking her to the airport. They flew to San Antonio to watch the Spurs play the Thunder in Game 5 of the NBA Western Conference Finals.

Why? Because Oklahoma City star Kevin Durant is Lainee’s favorite player.

“Awesome,” is how Lainee describes that surprise.

IT’S NOT ALWAYS AWESOME. These guys, they try. They try so hard. You see that, right? But they can’t be two places at once, and sometimes, like Brian Neal was saying earlier, something’s got to give.

Even the birth of a kid.

Well, sometimes it does. It did for Brian Neal when Emma was born 10 years ago.

Now don’t go getting the story wrong: He was there for Emma’s birth. But he was juggling that moment with another pretty big one—negotiations for his first collegiate head coaching job. At the time in 2004, Neal was an assistant at his alma mater, Northern Kentucky, but Thomas More College had an opening and Neal was the choice, assuming he could agree to terms.

The athletic director at Thomas More, Terry Connor, called Neal shortly after Amy’s labor ended and Neal walked out of the delivery room, down the hall, to talk quietly as Connor offered him the job. Turns out Brian and Amy (and baby Emma) were at St. Elizabeth hospital, about

10 minutes from the Thomas More campus, so Brian left the hospital to drive to Thomas More and shake hands with Connor on the new job.

“That was April 19, 2004,” Neal says.

“That was a crazy time.”

So consider now December 15, 2014.

That’s the day Chris and Christi Mack’s third child, and first son, is due. You know how these things work: The kid will probably be a few days early, or a few days late.

Those are just the odds. So let’s take a look at Xavier’s schedule and see who the Musketeers play around that time…

Oh. Xavier is at Missouri on Dec. 13, and Xavier is at Auburn on Dec. 20. So there’s a good chance Chris Mack’s team will be out of town when his son is born. He already missed one special day, the ultrasound that showed his third child would be a boy. Chris was there for the ultrasounds for Lainee and Hailee, but for some reason—“Maybe because this was our third kid,” Christi says, “and not our first”—he didn’t make it for that one.

“We had convinced ourselves that it would be another girl,” Christi says. “Sure enough, it was a boy.”

And so the hypothetical remains: What would the Xavier coach do on December 12 if his team is boarding a flight for Missouri as his wife is starting her labor in a Cincinnati-area hospital? Would he get on that plane?

We’ll let the wife and mother answer that one.

“I want him to get on that plane,” she says. “The good thing is my mom is close by, Chris’s mom is close by, and let’s be honest: He’s not that much help in the delivery room.”

With that last sentence Christi Mack is being silly, but then she turns serious.

“We want him to be there and he wants to be there, but there are other husbands who have missed their child’s delivery, and there are other important things I’d rather him be at for the baby,” she says. “If he misses it, he misses it. That’s what happens when you get pregnant in the middle of basketball season.”

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TWIST OF FATE

BY // MICHAEL PERRY

THRUST INTO HIS HANDS A YEAR AGO, THE WOMEN’S BASKETBALL PROGRAM IS NOW BRIAN NEAL’S TO REBUILD.

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B

RIAN NEAL WAS THE ONLY ONE IN THE HOUSE STILL AWAKE when the phone rang at around 11:30 p.m. Xavier athletic director Greg Christopher was calling.

Amy Waugh, the head coach of the Musketeers women’s basketball team for two years, had resigned for personal reasons. Christopher wanted to know if Neal, an assistant coach in his third year on the XU staff, would serve as interim coach.

“Of course,” Neal told Christopher. “Whatever you need.”

“I hung up the phone and realized there was a lot to do,” Neal says. “It wasn’t even about basketball. It was going to take a long time just to get all the players in the right frame of mind.”

This is a good time to mention that phone call took place Oct. 8, 2013, less than a month before Xavier’s first exhibition game. The players suddenly lost their coach. Many of them lost the person who recruited them to the school. The coaches lost their boss. How could it not be a traumatic time?

Waugh met with the team the next morning and Xavier announced her departure that day.

Waugh told Shannon Russell of The Cincinnati Enquirer: “I just don’t have that energy and excitement right now to lead them where they want to go.”

Neal met with the team that same morning and focused on providing stability and managing the players’ emotions. He met with his seniors to make sure they knew he was committed to them. “Nothing could happen until all of that was done,” he says. “My head coaching instincts kicked in and I knew what needed to be said to the kids.”

P H OT O G R A P H (L E F T ) B Y D O U G C O C H R A N

Christopher initially thought he would wait until after the 2013–14 season to launch a

national search for a new head coach. But that soon changed.

Understand that Christopher is passionate about women’s basketball. He was an associate athletic director at Purdue University during a time in which the Boilermakers women’s team was a national power. During his tenure as athletic director at Bowling Green State University, the women’s team advanced to the Sweet 16 of the 2007 NCAA Tournament. In addition to all that, Christopher was a member of the NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Committee for three years and served as chair in 2011–12.

Suffice it to say he is connected. So he started to make phone calls—to Division I head coaches, athletic directors, conference commissioners, NCAA staff, and USA Basketball officials.

He was not prepared for the consistent message he heard from almost everyone he called.

You’ve already got a great coach.

Brian is going to be one of your finalists.

Why are you doing this search?

“I didn’t expect that,” Christopher says. “That got me thinking: If Brian’s going to be one of our finalists, why wait? Why lose a recruiting class?”

As he made those calls, Christopher observed how Neal handled the team and was impressed with the way in which the players responded to him. “We may already have our coach,” Christopher told his bosses, Administrative Vice President John Kucia and Father Michael Graham, Xavier’s president.

He told Neal he wanted to have an in-depth conversation about the position. So Neal prepared for an interview in Christopher’s office with Christopher; Erin Kido, former associate athletic director and senior woman administrator; and Rich Franchak, deputy athletic director.

It ended up lasting four hours, during which Neal laid out his plans for the program.

“He didn’t take it lightly,” Christopher says.

Within a few days, Neal was offered the job. It was his first Division I head coaching posi-

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tion—and it was in the BIG EAST Conference.

He says his initial thoughts were relief that his family would not have to be uprooted, the assistant coaches would have jobs, and the players would have stability.

“I knew we had a massive undertaking,” Neal says. “You don’t get started by celebrating is how I looked at it. I figured there’d be other days for celebrating down the road.”

Brian Neal began building his reputation

as an assistant coach at Wilmington College (1992–98) and at Northern Kentucky University (1998–2004); the Norse won the Division II national championship in 2000 when he was on the staff.

As head coach at Thomas More College, Neal’s teams went 171–31 from 2004 to 2011 and had five consecutive Division III NCAA Tournament appearances and five straight Presidents’ Athletic Conference (PAC) titles. Four times he was conference Coach of the Year. Twice he was Great Lakes Region Coach of the Year.

Twice his teams advanced to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament. In 2010–11, TMC was ranked No. 1 in the country.

Neal, who says coaching at the Division I level was never his career goal, joined Waugh’s staff at Xavier in 2011.

“The credibility Brian has in the women’s basketball community meant a lot to me,” Christopher says. “I think in every industry…praise is not given out real easily. Anyone can win an interview. But to have unanimous praise from everybody I was calling, unsolicited, spoke volumes.”

Christopher, who came to Xavier in the spring of 2013, didn’t know Neal very well until last fall. But what he saw, he liked.

“He took a really difficult situation, and I watched how he handled it, the way in which he connected with the players, and the stability that he brought to that locker room,” Christopher says. “That was really

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important. He turned a very emotional moment into something positive.”

“I thought trust was built,” says Ashley Wanninger, a senior on last year’s team.

XU started the season 5–4, including an

overtime victory at Michigan and a victory against Kansas. Then came a four-game losing streak.

The New Year did not bring a change in fortune. Xavier went 3–15 in BIG EAST play. On Feb. 14, Xavier dismissed senior guard and leading scorer Shatyra Hawkes (13.9 ppg) from the team for violating athletic department rules.

Injuries did not help. Freshmen Martha Thompson and Erica Dawson suffered knee injuries and redshirted the 2013–14 season.

Freshman Leah Schaefer missed five games at the end of the season. Sophomore Jenna Crittendon missed the last 10 games of the season. Freshman Kayla Davis tore her ACL in the second-to-last game. Walk-on Briana

Gladney tore her ACL in mid-January.

The Musketeers finished 8–23 and ended the season on a 13-game losing streak, seven of which came after Hawkes’s departure.

“Early on there was all this energy, this big forward thrust,” Neal says. “Then when the energy went down, I continued to push. I push players fairly hard and then, to be honest with you, when we were starting to struggle I had to take a step back and realize that we needed a different approach if we were going to finish the season with any kind of success. You can only push kids so far because they block you out. I had to bring them back and use a different voice.”

There was one practice in February when Neal kicked the team off the floor three times. He told the players if they could not execute, they would either run the rest of practice or go home. Wanninger says freshmen were in tears and she herself was struggling. “He was just breaking us down,” she says. “We got back in there

SEASON

AVG HOME ATTENDANCE

RECORD

LEAGUE

POSTSEASON

COACH

2013–14

1,099

8–23

3–15 BIG EAST

—

Neal

2012–13

1,012

13–16

7–7 A-10

—

Waugh

2011–12

1,690

8–20

5–9 A-10

—

Waugh

2010–11

2,539

29–3

14–0 A-10

NCAA second round

McGuff

2009–10

2,415

30–4

14–0 A-10

NCAA Elite Eight

McGuff

2008–09

1,487

25–7

13–1 A-10

NCAA first round

McGuff

2007–08

1,865

24–9

11–3 A-10

NCAA first round

McGuff

2006–07

1,512

26–8

11–3 A-10

NCAA first round

McGuff

2005–06

1,500

21–9

11–5 A-10

WNIT second round

McGuff

2004–05

1,466

22–10

13–3 A-10

WNIT quarterfinals

McGuff

2003–04

1,447

17–13

8–8 A-10

WNIT first round

McGuff

2002–03

1,661

20–10

11–5 A-10

NCAA first round

McGuff

2001–02

1,627

12–19

5–11 A-10

—

Balcomb

2000–01

2,673

31–3

15–1 A-10

NCAA Elite Eight

Balcomb

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P H OT O G R A P H B Y D O U G C O C H R A N

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL SINCE MOVING INTO CINTAS CENTER

and we executed everything almost perfectly. After that, he kind of laid off a little bit. He just has a way of taking people to their breaking points and then building them back up. I can’t pinpoint what it was or how he did it, but he did it.”

Four of Xavier’s last eight losses were by eight points or less.

Overall, the team played 25 percent of its games with just six scholarship players and a walk-on. Still, the Musketeers seemed to play more cohesively toward the end of the season, and Neal and Christopher noticed improvement.

“I don’t handle losing very well,” Neal says. “At Thomas More, we lost 31 games in seven years. We lost 23 last year. That’s certainly different. I was really proud when it was all said and done. Step by step...you could see some positive things. You could see growth.”

P H OT O G R A P H B Y G R E G R U S T

Now he is embarking on his second

year as a Division I head coach. He’s finally had a chance to put the core of his program into place: academic standards and support systems, conditioning, weight training, offensive and defensive schemes, recruiting processes, and summer camps.

One of Neal’s most important successes was keeping intact a recruiting class that had committed before Waugh’s departure, including Kindell Fincher (Fort Wayne, Indiana), Marquia Turner (North Canton, Ohio), and Jada Byrd (Lithonia, Georgia).

Later, Xavier signed transfers Raeshawn Gaffney (University of Virginia) and Maleeka Kynard (Ohio State), and Finnish player Annina Äijänen.

And now comes the marketing and PR game. Neal knows he has to re-sell the program in the community and wants to see 3,000 to 4,000 at every home game. Xavier’s average attendance the past two seasons (1,099 and 1,012) was the lowest since Cintas Center opened in 2000. The program

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has endured three straight losing seasons for the first time since 1983–90 when it had seven in a row below .500.

But Neal believes the fan and alumni base will enjoy getting to know his players, many of whom he describes as charismatic. He is prepared to get out in the community and be an ambassador for the university, the sport, and his program.

He believes this year’s team will have more talent, more athleticism, and more depth than in several years.

But he also knows that turning around the program will not happen overnight.

“Greg [Christopher] and Father Graham made me the head coach, but they did not make me the leader of the team,” Neal says. “I had to become the leader of the team. The leader is selected by the group. I had to paint a picture, share a vision, and that’s where we are in that process.

“Our goal is to play in the Final Four. We want to have a complete basketball program. The way I look at the program: In the last 14 years Xavier has played in the Elite Eight twice under two different coaches. Why the heck can’t we, with a third coach, win one more game, make one more layup?

That puts us in the Final Four. That’s my vision.”

ABOUT BRIAN NEAL Five things you may not know about Xavier’s head women’s coach:

1 // He has four children and helps coach his son’s Little League baseball team.

2 // He has a journalism background

TAKE TWO

MARK EHLEN IS IN A NEW ROLE THIS TIME AROUND.

MARK EHLEN LAUGHS WHEN HE CALLS HIMSELF “the king of I-75.” But it’s no joke.

The director of basketball performance for the Xavier women’s basketball team has coached at the University of Cincinnati, the University of Dayton, Miami University, and Xavier University, not to mention the University of Toledo, where he was head coach for 13 years. Oh, and just to cover off more Ohio connections, he has an undergraduate degree from Ohio State and a master’s from Bowling Green.

For the Xavier players and staff, he may very well be the wise sage of the program—Yoda in blue and white.

“I don’t feel old enough to be that guy,” says Ehlen, 61.

“But I have been through everything we’ll see. I have had great years, I’ve had bad years, and everything in between.

I’ve been through the highs and lows of coaching.”

One of the highs came as Xavier’s head coach. He led the Musketeers to their first ever NCAA Tournament appearance in 1993. His office was in O’Connor Sports Center, right next to men’s basketball assistant coaches Skip Prosser and Dino Gaudio. Ehlen was XU’s head coach from 1986 to 1995.

He left to coach Toledo, where his teams went 240–149 in 13 years, including eight Mid-American Conference titles and six postseason appearances. He is the second-winningest women’s basketball coach in MAC history.

“It’s pretty reassuring to have someone with Mark’s experience and history of success on your side,” Xavier women’s basketball coach Brian Neal says. “He’s been a good friend for years. I have always respected his basketball mind and appreciated the kind of person he is. Having a chance to work with him has been great for me, our players, the coaching staff—the entire program.”

Ehlen joined Neal’s staff in November 2013 shortly after the two had a casual lunch just to catch up and talk basketball. Ehlen was not coaching at the time. A week later, Neal was promoted to interim head coach, and he quickly asked Ehlen to join his staff.

“It’s a little bit like being Marty McFly, going back to the future,” Ehlen says with a smile. “In a way it’s weird to be back at Xavier in a different role. It also makes me feel like I’ve come home. Of all the years I’ve been a coach, the years at Xavier were some of the most fulfilling in my life.” —M.P.

and is a former Cincinnati Post sports stringer.

3 // He was a sports information director at Wilmington College.

4 // He is a member of St. Patrick Catholic Church in Independence, Kentucky.

5 // He is currently pursuing a master’s degree in sport administration from XU.

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GONE FISHING MACK VS. A LARGEMOUTH BASS? NO CONTEST.

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CHRIS MACK IS STALKING HIS PREY, AND HE’S NOT FOOLING AROUND. He’s inching toward the pond with a fishing pole in his hand and he’s casting the hook into the disturbingly blue water, and my goodness is that water a disturb— “Shhh!”

Wait a minute, I tell the Xavier basketball coach. We’re in his territory and all, on a pond on the golf course behind his house—but did you just SHUSH me?

“You can talk,” he says. “But try not to talk so loud.”

Sigh.

This is what it’s like to go fishing with the Xavier basketball coach. This is what it’s like to do anything with the Xavier basketball coach: He’s in it to win it.

Shoot free throws against him, as I did a few years ago in a contest sponsored by Coaches Against Cancer, and he’s going to stand near you and loudly count the number you make out of 25, and when he stops counting at 18 because that’s all the free throws a lousy writer can make, he’s going to have this huge grin on his face and then start shooting 25 of his own. And he’s going to make 24. Because it’s like I said: Chris Mack is in it to win it.

In the basement of his house on that golf course is a Ms. Pac-Man video

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BY // GREGG DOYEL PHOTOGRAPHS BY // BOB STEVENS

game, the real thing with a slot for quarters, the whole bit, and when you tease him that it’s cute for him to have chosen Ms. Pac-Man out of all those 1980s video games, he shuts you down.

“C’mon, man,” he says, starting his brief victory speech with his favorite two-word exasperation. “That has five games on it: Pac-Man, Frogger, Donkey Kong, Ms. PacMan, and Galaga. And nobody’s beating me at Galaga.”

Believe it. If Chris Mack is in it, he’s in it to…well, you know. Win it. And so it is at the pond on the golf course behind his house, which Mack reaches by racing his golf cart through the empty terrain of Summit Hills Country Club, which is closed on Mondays.

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Which means Monday is fishing day for Mack in the summer, and on this Monday he bounds over the course to a pond, where he once pulled out a five-pounder.

“Largemouth bass,” he says. “I didn’t weigh it, but it was five pounds easy. Maybe five-and-a-half.”

That’s quite a bass to pull out of a pond as small as— “Got one!” he says, and now Mack is walking toward his taut fishing line, getting closer to the fish even as he jerks the pole once, twice, to get the hook good and deep. He reels it in, and what comes out of the water doesn’t look like a five-pounder.

It looks sort of— “C’mon, man,” Mack mutters to the fish. “You can’t be any bigger than a pound.”

Mack starts to dig the hook out of the fish, but he’d embedded it so deep that it doesn’t come easy, and he nicks his finger. He pulls out the hook, gently tosses the fish back into the water and shoves the bleeding finger into his mouth for a minute. Not the cleanest thing you ever saw, but we’re not at a violin recital. We’re at a pond on

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a golf course behind his house, and we’re doing what Chris Mack has loved doing since his grandfather took him fishing as a boy. That’s why Mack fishes—because he loves it. It’s not to turn off the noise of coaching, because as he says, “You never turn it completely off. You’re always thinking of stuff [even while fishing]. I might be thinking of tomorrow’s practice or where we are with a recruit.”

Mack fishes to fish, and he’s done it all over. He’s gone fly fishing at Jackson Hole and deep-sea fishing off the coast of Florida, where he once caught 12 king

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P H OT O G R A P H B Y B O B S T E V E N S

“YOU’RE ALWAYS THINKING OF STUFF [EVEN WHILE FISHING].

I MIGHT BE THINKING OF TOMORROW’S PRACTICE OR WHERE WE ARE WITH A RECRUIT.”

P H OT O G R A P H S C O U R T E S Y O F T H E M AC K FA M I LY

mackerel and hauled them to a nearby restaurant that, for a small fee, will cook what you caught.

“We ate good that night,” Mack says with a smile.

And he catches largemouth bass with his daughter, Hailee, on the disturbingly blue water on the pond on the golf course.

“Why do you keep saying that about the water?” Mack asks, and I’m afraid to tell him. I’m afraid to get another shushing. But I tell him the water looks too perfectly blue to be natural, that the fish surely can’t live in whatever elements were added— “Got another one!” he yells, shutting me up in every possible way. He pulls this one out, but he’s not happy about this one either. “That’s another small one. C’mon, man. Let’s go.”

Mack frees the little fish—poundand-a-half, tops—and hops into his golf cart and is gone. I’m hanging onto the back, not that Mack seems to care.

He’s hurtling through Summit Hills to another pond, a little sliver of water, all blue and shallow and near a drainage pipe. If there’s a fish in here, I’ll be the most surp— “Stop that,” he says. “We’ll get a bigger one here.”

And maybe we will. Or maybe we would have, but a jagged bolt of lightning lands somewhere on the golf course, close enough to make Mack start walking, wordlessly, to the golf cart. Leaving is his idea, and I try to tell him that we’ll be fine, but he’s headed home. We park the cart inside an adorable little golf cart–sized garage he had specially designed, then walk through his basement and up the stairs to his living room. Mack is leading the way, and he walks to a large window overlooking his deck and the golf course beyond it. He points to the deck, which is being pummeled by rain, and smiles.

“We beat it,” he says.

Of course. In it to win it.

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ABOVE: Chris Mack and his daughters, Hailee and Lainee, have a successful fishing expedition in Clearwater, Fla. BELOW LEFT: Mack catches a largemouth bass in a pond near his home. BELOW: The Mack girls enjoy the fruits of their labor, eating some of the fish they caught in Clearwater.

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THE ART OF

RECRUITING “OUR DIFFERENCE-MAKER HAS TO BE RELATIONSHIPS.” BY // MICHAEL PERRY

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ecruiting is the lifeblood of any college athletic program. Bring in the right combination of talented student-athletes and you win; struggle to do that and you will struggle on the field, on the court, or on the track.

Not only that, high-profile recruits and student-athletes can become the face of your program or even the university. They attract a bright spotlight—which can be a good or bad situation for the school.

The Musketeers men’s basketball team’s recruiting process is intense and as competitive as the games on the court. Its success depends on relationships. It depends on details. It depends on a relentless work ethic, extreme organization, tremendous communication, and sometimes good ol’ fashioned luck.

Here’s an inside look at Xavier’s recruiting process for men’s basketball.

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THERE IS A METHOD TO THE MADNESS IT’S JULY, AND “THE BOARD” HAS 53 PICTURES and names on it. High school players from 19 states are organized by position and broken into years: Class of 2015, Class of 2016, and Class of 2017.

This is how the Xavier coaches visually prioritize and track players they are recruiting.

They generally recruit three classes at a time, though occasionally they begin building relationships with players who are even younger. They have had a rising eighth grader come to watch a practice, but most of their time is spent on high school seniors, juniors, and sophomores. Now and then a freshman begs some attention.

Every Monday morning throughout the year, the coaches meet to discuss recruiting. Typically, it’s at 9 a.m. in head coach Chris Mack’s office. Sometimes, if the team or coaches are on the road, it’s in a hotel room.

The time can vary. But the mission cannot.

The assistant coaches are assigned regions and players to follow. For example, assistant coach Travis Steele tracks Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, and Michigan. Assistant Rick Carter also tracks Michigan and Ohio with ties

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to Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Missouri. Assistant Mike Pegues focuses on the East Coast.

They come prepared each Monday to discuss the status of each player. They recap communications from the previous week, share information they might have learned, talk about visits the player may be taking to other schools, discuss what next steps should be.

“You better know everything about that kid if you’re going to put him on the board,” Pegues says.

The coaches work together.

They talk about visits in the next week and what players they want to bring to campus. They may collectively be working on as many as 90 to 100 high school players at any given time.

“You’ve got to really plan for the future at all times,” Pegues says. “We have to all be on the same page.”

Every Sunday night, in advance of the Monday meeting, the assistant coaches touch base with each other and share their needs from Mack. One e-mail is sent to Mack. They are reminders to touch base with players, parents, and coaches by phone, text, written note, or other method of communication.

That could include an invitation to a high school or AAU coach to attend a Xavier practice.

“Our difference-maker has to be relationships,” Pegues says.

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What are coaches looking for?

XAVIER COACHES DON’T WANT to spend a lot of time on a player who is not going to be a good fit. It’s important to pretty quickly evaluate three areas: 1. Academic potential 2. Basketball ability 3. Character

“We’re not going to sacrifice one for another,” Steele says.

That means the staff has to do its homework as soon as it believes a player can help the team on the court.

Coaches talk to high school and/or AAU coaches, athletic directors, principals, and guidance counselors. They get transcripts and check out players on social media.

They try to determine character and academic interest right away.

“Everybody’s academic potential is going to be different,” Steele says. “We have to believe they value education and want to work at it. We don’t want lazy guys.”

A player can have an upside as a player or academically, but…

“Character is character,” Steele says. “I don’t think you can change it.

Character is nonnegotiable.”

TOUCHING BASE—over and over EACH PLAYER RECRUITED BY A SCHOOL IS DIFFERENT. MOST PREFER texting over calls. Some have parents in the process; some rely on their coaches.

It’s the job of Xavier coaches to find out a player’s preferences and discover the most important and influential people in the decision-making.

Starting June 15 prior to a player’s junior year of high school, college coaches can begin contacting them.

Steele says that once June 15 of Trevon Bluiett’s junior year arrived, Steele texted Bluiett and called his father every day until the day he signed a national letter of intent to attend Xavier. Steele could sense that freshman Sean O’Mara didn’t want to be called every day, so Steele texted him daily but called only every four or five days.

It’s all about developing a rapport.

“If you take interest in their lives, they’ll take interest in you,” Steele says.

“We’re going to get a kid because of our relationships. We sell people.”

Coaches ask how school is and maybe comment on an NBA game or play from the previous night. They talk about shoes or other topics of interest to the players.

Parents like handwritten notes; players prefer texts. Xavier coaches never type a note.

XU coaches also touch base with people around the player: coaches, teachers, priests, student managers, strength coaches, close friends, girlfriends, and relatives other than parents.

When senior Matt Stainbrook decided to transfer from Western Michigan and was looking for a new school, Xavier coaches believed Stainbrook himself was going to be the primary decision-maker. While they kept in close contact with his parents, they worked hard at their relationship with Stainbrook.

“Every contact, every touch point, is an opportunity to build on the relationship and develop a better bond and understanding of the players,” Carter says.

“What nobody really talks about is that it’s often enjoyable getting to know the players, their families, and the people closest to them. It certainly makes the recruiting process interesting.”

SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCE

Insta

OH, HOW RECRUITING HAS CHANGED OVER THE YEARS BECAUSE OF SOCIAL MEDIA. COACHING STAFFS today have to be familiar with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and Vine, and instantly become aware of the next tool that becomes popular.

The good news is that it provides recruiters multiple opportunities to learn about a player through their social media usage. “I want to see who these kids are,” Carter says.

The bad news is that there are more rules specific to social media that coaches have to know.

For example: You can’t tweet at a recruit, because that becomes public and you can’t acknowledge publicly that you are recruiting a specific player. But you can direct message a student on Twitter because that’s a private message.

Same goes for Facebook—a coach can’t post to a recruits “wall” but can send a private message.

By following players on social media, coaches can learn about their likes and dislikes (food, music, movies, etc.) and even learn about visits to other schools.

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THE VISITS Speaking of “THE RULE BOOK” THE 2014–15 NCAA DIVISION I MANUAL IS 290 PAGES—OF WHICH 65 are related to recruiting.

Each June coaches have to take a test in order to be able to go out on the road and recruit.

“There are a lot of little rules that you would never think of,” Pegues says. “Once you do it for so long, there are things you just know. But some of the rules can get confusing. That’s when we just have to communicate and do our homework on the front end.” When in doubt, the coaches contact Xavier’s Athletic Compliance Office.

Xavier’s Compliance Office provides each coach with a laminated recruiting calendar before school starts. Among other things, it tells them when coaches are allowed on the road to recruit and when they are not.

There are “dead” periods when recruits are not allowed on campus. It details the hectic July evaluation period, when coaches attend NCAAsanctioned events all over the country to scout players. And there are many rules associated with those events. For example: • Coaches can see a player who has been on their campus numerous times, but can’t talk to him. “I don’t even wave; I think that’s gray area,” Steele says. They will make eye contact. They want the player to know they are there. They also can’t talk to the parents, coaches, girlfriends, or school officials.

• They cannot meet the player afterward for a bite to eat if the player is attending the event. If a coach had dinner with a player who had no intention of attending the event, then changed his mind after the dinner, it would be a violation.

• They cannot have any contact with a player, his parents, or coaches until the player’s games in the event are over.

• Coaches can only talk to the player’s coach if the coach is not attending the event at all. Again, if Xavier has dinner with the coach who then changes his mind and attends the event the next day, it’s a violation.

There are many such details the coaches have to know.

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OTHER THAN A COMMITMENT, GETTING a player to visit campus is a primary goal.

There are two kinds of recruiting visits: official and unofficial.

• Unofficial: Xavier cannot pay for one

thing, and they cannot go off campus with the player. An unlimited amount of unofficial visits can be taken. Xavier had as many as 30 this past June. Local high school players often come up on their own. Sometimes they come for open gyms to play with the Musketeers, which is OK as long as coaches are not watching. Former Musketeer Semaj Christon, for example, was on campus often when he was attending Winton Woods High School.

• Official: Xavier can pay for travel, lodging,

and food for the athletes and parents; not for siblings. Paying for guardians or other family representatives requires a waiver from the NCAA. The staff can take a player off campus so they can tour downtown or have a meal at some of Cincinnati’s finer restaurants, including Jeff Ruby’s or Nada —depending on the type of food a player likes. Xavier is allowed 12 official visits per year for men’s basketball (XU rarely uses all 12; last year it used six). A recruit is allowed to take five official visits but only one to a school. High school players can start taking official visits after January 1 of their junior year. In the fall, only seniors can take official visits.

Official visits are 48 hours long and start as soon as the recruit arrives on campus. Expenses run on the average of $1,000 per person per visit.

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Details, details, details

P H OT O G R A P H B Y P H I L I P G R O S H O N G

YOU NEVER GET A SECOND CHANCE TO MAKE A FIRST IMPRESSION. That’s how Xavier coaches approach every visit to campus.

“This is your one opportunity,” Carter says. “You don’t know if you’re ever going to get them back.”

The morning of a visit—official or unofficial—members of the Xavier staff walk the route that a recruit will take, making sure there is no gum on sidewalks, no unforeseen construction, no locked doors, no barriers to a perfect campus tour.

“We don’t want trash laying around,” Steele says. “We want it to look pristine. We want it to look perfect. We don’t want to be surprised.”

The coaches want the locker room, the main gym, the auxiliary gym, and the weight room all in order. No towels on the floor. No weights out of place.

“We’re going to roll out the red carpet,” Pegues says. “We want to knock it out of the park. We want it to be the best visit they have.”

The recruits and their families receive an itinerary when they arrive. They will start with head coach Chris Mack, who will talk about Xavier being the best of both worlds: big-time basketball and a smaller campus. They will talk about academics and make sure players and families understand Xavier’s commitment to students earning degrees.

Mack will talk about graduating 94 consecutive players

who played as seniors. He will talk about athletic academic advisors Sister Rose Ann Fleming and Chris Barbour, Xavier’s NCAA Tournament success, devoted Cintas Center crowds, and the size of classes.

They will walk the campus—not drive in a golf cart—to accent the accessibility. They will visit dorms, cafeterias, and classrooms, including the biggest classroom on campus, a lecture room—not a lecture hall—in the Williams College of Business that holds 60 students. They will go to Gallagher Student Center and check out the view from the Clock Tower.

XU staff, including graduate assistants, will be on hand to open doors and summon elevators to ensure a smooth and efficient tour. They want parents to think: If you’re that organized for this, you are probably going to be organized for my son’s life.

Recruits and their families will meet any combination of Barbour and Fleming, athletic director Greg Christopher, strength and conditioning coach Matt Jennings, associate head athletic trainer David Fluker, associate athletic director for communications Tom Eiser, players, and faculty representatives, including deans of colleges.

“We really try to sell academics,” Mack says. “We always show academics first before we show anything basketball-wise.

Because academics do come first here, and we want to make that very clear to a recruit and his family.

“We’re not a big state school with frat row and college football Saturdays. We are who we are. We’re not for everybody.

We’re unique, a special place.”

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EYES AND EARS ALL OVER THE COUNTRY FIFTEEN YEARS AGO, THERE WERE BUT A HANDFUL OF CREDIBLE SCOUTING services that offered reports of recruits and tracked high school players all over the country. Now there are hundreds, some of which are national and some of which focus on specific regions or states. These are paid services.

Xavier coaches pay for as many as 25 services. They have binders of reports and keep e-mails from many of the services organized. Some of the scouts are more familiar with Xavier than others. The coaches trust some of the scouting services more than others. “But you have to get to know them all,” Carter says.

Some recruiting scouts proactively call schools when they see a player who would be a great fit. Some recruiting services have biases and—given the chance—may talk well or badly about a program or coach. It’s the nature of the business.

After events, scouts prepare reports on players, results, and recruiting activity, and that’s largely what schools pay for. That way even if coaches are not at a location, they can read all about it.

Among the recruiting analysts Xavier follows: • Brian Snow, who works for scout.com and used to work for rivals.com • John Stovall, ESPN.com/RecruitingNation • Trevor Andershock, NY2LASports.com • Brandon Bradley, scout.com • Evan Daniels, scout.com

SEEING IS BELIEVING THE NCAA PROVIDES SCHOOLS WITH A 47-PAGE LIST OF SANCTIONED EVENTS in July, when coaches spend the most time on the road. The 2014 events took place July 9–13, 16–20, and 23–27 all over the country.

During these events, coaches can see and evaluate players an unlimited amount of times.

During the academic year, schools are permitted a maximum of seven days of evaluations per recruit. That can be at a high school game, practice, open gym, weight-lifting session, or something else. The staff has 130 total evaluation days for the year.

What are Xavier coaches looking for when they see players in person?

• Obviously, athleticism, skill, length • Attitude • Are they a great teammate?

• Do they motivate teammates?

• Coachability • Leadership qualities • Do they talk or keep to themselves?

• Do they provide positive or negative energy to the team?

“There are a lot of little things,” Carter says. “Does a guy make eye contact? How is his handshake? How does he interact with people? If we’re at a game and he gets in foul trouble, how is he on the bench—does he just exclude himself from the team or is he the guy cheering for his teammates and high-fiving guys? Does he argue with refs and coaches?”

Xavier coaches look for fire, passion, intensity. They consider the makeup of the team and what the roster needs.

A good example is what the staff saw when recruiting freshman Larry Austin.

“Larry brings passion, toughness,” Pegues says. “The coach never had to tell him to huddle the team up; he’s slapping guys on the butts, high-fiving, huddling. He’s a tough kid.

He brings a lot of intangibles.”

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The thrill of victory and…

COACHES MAY INVEST years in a single player, not to mention developing a personal connection.

But in the end, you either win or lose. You either sign a player, or he goes elsewhere.

“It can be stressful,” Carter says. “It’s a lot of work and a lot of time. But also a lot of emotion. There is an emotional connection you have with kids.”

When XU loses a recruit: “It’s a hard, hard, hard deal,” Pegues says. “You do take it personally. I think we’re all competitive. We are all motivated. We feel like we can beat anybody.

And we want what’s best for Xavier because Xavier is a special place.”

Xavier coaches think about what they could have done differently and try to get feedback from a recruit, parent, or coach. They want to learn so they can get better.

“It affects you, but you’ve got to learn to get over it,” Steele says. “Guess what?

Nobody feels sorry for you.

It happens to everybody. It happens to North Carolina and Duke and Kentucky.

Once that kid says no, you’ve got to go get somebody else good. You’ve got to get off the mat and keep going.”

When a recruit does sign: “It is a high,” Carter says. “I think we’re all excited. It’s a team effort. We feel like we have a great place to sell.”

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COOL DOWN

SCOUTING

AT THE MOVIES TECHNOLOGY—LAPTOPS, STREAMING VIDEO, SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES THAT DELIVER INSTANT HIGHLIGHTS—HAS CHANGED THE WAY TEAMS SCOUT OPPONENTS. BY DAVE MALASKA

I

office in Cintas Center, there’s a row of DVD recorders and satellite receivers that would make any technophile jealous.

During the season, they’re running almost constantly, gathering game film to scout future opponents—and possible opponents, come tournament time—but they’re just one part of Xavier’s high-tech system for scouting future opponents.

This is the digitalized world of college hoops, far removed from the days when stacks of dusty VHS tapes and clipboard notes were the de rigueur decor of college coaches’ offices. Today, the film’s converted to digital format for viewing on laptops. It’s highly edited, it’s analyzed, then analyzed again.

Online services provide advanced statistics, video clips of individual player performances, and detailed game situation analysis.

This is the information age, and Xavier’s taking full advantage of it.

“It’s 2014. It’s a different world than it was five or 10 years ago,” says Growe, Xavier’s director of basketball operations. “With all the information that’s available, you have to use it or you’ll be exposed.”

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Highlights at your fingertips The information gathering starts with video flowing into Growe’s office and streamed to computers used by graduate assistants Ty Sampson and Joe Sullivan. The two spend hours cutting down a game film, isolating each possession and every detail using special software—the “thankless grunt work,” according to Growe.

Their work goes into a server, which currently holds clips and games from the last four years.

Like other college programs and almost all NBA teams, Xavier also has access to Synergy Sports Technology, a subscription-based video archive service that provides instant video of any televised game, along with extensive statistics and trending analytics for both opponents and individual players. Xavier downloads game film into an editing system, and from there coaches can break down a game into possessions.

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I L LU S T R AT I O N B Y K E V I N N E C E S S A RY

IN A CORNER OF JEREMY GROWE’S

Synergy can break down highlights of: • Every 3-point make or miss from a specific player • Every 2-point shot from the left or right side • Every inbounds play after a timeout It could take three to four hours to download and analyze a game, Sampson says.

The detail is breathtaking. Nearly suffocating.

“Here’s last year’s national championship game,” Growe says, sitting in his office and tapping a few keys on his laptop. The screen is quickly filled with stats and video clips, each a pertinent point of UConn’s 60–54 win over Kentucky last April.

Another quick tap, and he’s got Xavier’s season up on his screen.

“Here’s Semaj Christon. You can get all Semaj’s shots from last year—they come up as stats and video clips. There are all of Semaj’s ball screens to the left, all his turnovers, his 3-point attempts. You can look for all of his possessions in the last two minutes of games that were within three points,” he continues.

“It’s that detailed. The danger is, you can get lost in all the numbers,” Growe adds.

Coaches learn team/player tendencies That’s a worry for assistant coaches Mike Pegues, Travis Steele, and Rick Carter. The three are tasked with analyzing the clips and coming up with scouting reports on the opponents.

Despite the technology advances, it’s a timeintensive task, watching each game multiple times to note the nuances of opponents’ game plans. How long a coach spends preparing for one opponent varies. For example, coaches may spend less time on conference opponents because they know the programs so well. They could spend hours preparing for a new opponent.

Carter, who has 11 years of experience combing through game films, said it’s like anything else—the more you do it, the quicker you become. “It still eats a lot of your time, though. You go on the road, you’re in a nice hotel room with a nice bed and there you are, staring at your laptop for hours in the middle of the night,” he says. “If you go to a conference tournament where you’ve got three or four games over a couple of days, you’ll never even turn on the TV.” Each coach has his own system, but Carter

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says he’ll start by watching clips of opponents’ offensive plays, then watch their defensive videos. H e’ll watch the game in sequence once, then again to catch specifics. “At that point, you’re looking for what play they ran after a timeout. What play followed that, and how they stacked up after that,” he says.

Then he’ll watch it again to register personal tendencies: Does that guard prefer going to his left? Does the big man like entry passes over his right shoulder? “You end up probably watching the game four or five times, along with all the separate clips a couple of times,” he says.

The assistants give their scouting reports to head coach Chris Mack in time for him to watch film on his own before game prep with the players begins.

‘A lot for them to take in’ While some programs choose to saddle players with the tiniest of details, the Musketeers staff prefers to give players “the big picture,” says Carter. Xavier coaches generally believe that success in a game is more about what the Musketeers do and how they execute rather than how much they execute a game plan to stop an opponent.

Director of basketball administration Mario Mercurio creates a hard copy synopsis that is typically 10 to 12 pages for the players, and the staff reviews video with players for maybe 10 to 15 minutes. Then it’s time to work on those concepts in hours of practice.

Keep in mind that players often have limited time to prepare from game to game.

Coaches are the ones who have to know the opponent inside and out. “We make sure the players know the three or four things they need to know to win,” Carter says. “It’s still a lot for them to take in. I don’t think people outside the program understand not only the time we as a staff put in on scouting, but how much the kids do, too. This isn’t something you read a couple of times and get it. You’ve got to read it, see the film and then put it into play in practice.

It’s a lot of work for them, on top of travel and classes.

“I don’t think they get nearly the credit for the amount of time they put into it, but it’s something you’ve got to do if you want to win.”

“IT’S 2014. IT’S A DIFFERENT WORLD THAN IT WAS FIVE OR 10 YEARS AGO. WITH ALL THE INFORMATION THAT’S AVAILABLE, YOU HAVE TO USE IT OR YOU’LL BE EXPOSED.”

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SCHEDULE BREAKDOWN

SCHEDULING

2 014-2 01 5 1 1 2 3 0 2 7 1 1 2 2 2 1 6

BY MONTH NOV DEC JAN FEB MAR AWAY HOME

AWAY HOME

BY DAYS OF THE WEEK SUN MON TU WED TH FRI SAT

4 4 3 5 0 3 2 6 3 1 Xavier's three November away games are in Anaheim, California, as a part of the Wooden Legacy. Xavier will be joined by Washington, UTEP, Princeton, Western Michigan, San Diego, Long Beach, and San Jose State in the ESPN-hosted event.

NATIONAL REACH

All 31 Xavier regular-season games are on national television networks this season.

Xavier will have 16 regular-season games broadcast on FOX Sports 1 or 2, in addition to BIG EAST Tournament games.

15,857 total miles

CREATING A SCHEDULE IS TOUGHER THAN IT LOOKS, AS XAVIER’S DIRECTOR OF BASKETBALL ADMINISTRATION EXPLAINS. BY MARC EMRAL

5 6 X AV I E R N AT I O N | FA L L 2 0 1 4

I

basketball non-conference schedule.

Mario Mercurio, XU’s director of basketball administration, knows about planning, and he knows about scheduling. He has been the main scheduler for the Musketeers for 11 seasons.

The most important part of his job is having a plan. “If you go into scheduling with no plan you are already positioning yourself to be unsuccessful,” he says. “You can’t approach it from a mindset of what do we have to get this year without thinking about a two-, three-, or four-year window. You shouldn’t make decisions based on just one team or one year.”

Because conference scheduling is handled by the BIG EAST, Mercurio has to plan for nine non-conference games, plus any early-season exempt tournaments. And he has had discussions about the exempt tournaments out to the 2020 season.

“Ultimately, the conference schedule is 99 percent out of your hands,” he says. “With the BIG EAST Conference’s double round-robin scheduling for-

XavierNationMagazine.com

I L LU S T R AT I O N B Y M A R I O M E R C U R I O

THE MATCH GAME

IT TAKES A LOT OF PLANNING TO COME UP WITH A XAVIER

Xavier defeated the University of Tennessee, from the Southeastern Conference, 67–63 at Cintas Center last November.

The teams also played in 2012 in Knoxville (the Volunteers won that 51–47).

Tennessee advanced to the Sweet 16 of the 2014 NCAA Tournament.

mat, you are not called upon for input about schedule balance and home-and-home partners like we saw in the Atlantic 10.”

HERE ARE MERCURIO’S GOALS WHEN HE SETS OUT TO CREATE A SCHEDULE. • Get an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament. Xavier’s non-conference schedule

should never be seen as a negative on Selection Sunday.

• Improve NCAA tourney seed. The non-con-

ference portion of the schedule must positively impact important power numbers like Ratings Percentage Index, strength of schedule, and the Pomeroy College Basketball Ratings (also known as KenPom).

• Win as many games as possible. Designing

a schedule that provides a perfect balance between difficulty and sensibility from both a logistical and competitive standpoint.

• Prepare for conference play. To be ready

for BIG EAST play, the non-conference portion must, in some way, emulate the 18 games with which you will conclude your season.

“The question is how are we going to build a schedule to accomplish as many of those goals as possible?” Mercurio says.

“You want to build a schedule that results in the highest power numbers possible, testing you both in the Cintas Center and away from home.”

OUTSIDE OF AN EXEMPT EVENT, THE NINE NON-CONFERENCE GAMES WILL BE A COMBINATION OF: • Home-and-home series against high major caliber teams, typically balanced be-

P H OT O G R A P H B Y D O U G C O C H R A N

tween the number of games played on the road and at home each season.

• High-profile neutral site games in loca-

tions that benefit Xavier from either a basketball or university recruiting standpoint.

• Guarantee games—when a school pays an

opponent for the game—at home against teams projected to be in the Top 200 RPI. “A guarantee game gives us an opportunity to schedule an opponent here at Cintas Center without the obligation of a

XavierNationMagazine.com

“YOU WANT TO BUILD A SCHEDULE THAT RESULTS IN THE HIGHEST POWER NUMBERS POSSIBLE, TESTING YOU BOTH IN THE CINTAS CENTER AND AWAY FROM HOME.”

return to their campus,” Mercurio says.

“We have always tried to get the best possible teams in those slots because, just like the high-major home-and-home or big neutral site game, that game factors into all of your strength numbers.”

Xavier will use guarantee games strategically to balance the November and December portion of the schedule.

Examples would be: • The first game, on the first day the NCAA dictates games to start (for 2014–

15, that’s Friday, Nov. 14, vs. Northern Arizona) • Separating back-to-back road games • Coming out of exam week and Christmas break

“The sequence or flow of the schedule is incredibly important,” Mercurio says.

“Before even evaluating which teams we will play, we map out the schedule strictly from a sequencing standpoint. First we identify what pieces are locked in such as the season opening date, the exempt tournament dates, and where exams and Thanksgiving and Christmas fall. After that, we identify the most advantageous layout for home, away, and neutral site games. That map is more important than the teams that you play.

“We want to see our season ticket holders look at the schedule and say, ‘Awesome schedule.’ But it has to be balanced with a plan and foundation. You have to be able to look at it and say this schedule is smart. This schedule has a plan. This schedule has a purpose. It’s built to get this team to the NCAA tournament. That’s the ultimate goal of the schedule.”

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TECHNOLOGY

#STAYINGCONNECTED SOCIAL MEDIA AND WEBSITES PROVIDE COUNTLESS WAYS TO KEEP TRACK OF XAVIER NEWS.

BY RODNEY McKISSIC

F

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FOR THE RABID, MOST PASSIONATE XAVIER BASKETBALL FAN, IT IS THE GREATEST time ever if you want to be able to follow the Musketeers 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The growing online footprint of the program and its ever-increasing social media reach means that you can largely keep track of every move the team makes around the clock—often in real time.

Some of you—and you know who you are—are already pretty good at this; some of you are a little frightened.

Don’t be. We’re here to help you navigate the internet.

XavierNationMagazine.com

TWITTER Twitter is an important communication tool to follow Xavier basketball.

You will get quick, up-tothe-minute updates on the Musketeers on relevant—and at times irrelevant—subject matter. You choose whether you want to see the latest news in real time.

For those who have not used Twitter, here are a couple of details that will help you to get started: • Twitter can serve as one-stop shopping for everything concerning Xavier basketball.

• Former players, coaches, and media types express themselves, offer opinions, and recommend articles—among other things—by means of 140-character messages that are called tweets.

• In most cases, tweets are public and accessible to everyone.

GETTING ON TWITTER

Now, let’s get you on Twitter.

First, you’ll need to create an account by going to twitter.com and finding the sign-up box, or go directly to twitter.com/signup.

Now, enter your full name and e-mail address and create a password, then click sign up for Twitter.

On the next page, you can select a username (type your own or select one suggested by Twitter). You will be informed if the username you want is available. Be sure to double-check your name, e-mail address, password, and username and click create my account. It’s that easy. Note: You may be asked to complete a CAPTCHA—an automated test with distorted text—to let Twitter know that you’re human.

Twitter will send a confirmation e-mail to the address you entered on sign up. Click the link in that e-mail to confirm your email address and account. You can build a network, which means that you can find contacts who you’re interested in and contacts who are interested in you. (We’ll help with this in a minute.)

Now start tweetin’!

WHO TO FOLLOW ON TWITTER

Don’t worry, we have a list of 100 for you on page 62, but here are the first 10 people you should follow (and why).

XavierNationMagazine.com

1. Chris Mack, head coach, @CoachChrisMack: Goes without saying he knows a thing or two about the Musketeers.

2. Shannon Russell, Cincinnati Enquirer, @slrussell: The longtime Enquirer reporter is the top media source for Xavier hoops.

3. Xavier athletics, @XUAthletics: Provides up-to-the-minute reports not only on XU basketball, but all Musketeer sports.

4. Xavier basketball, @XavierMBB and @XavierWBB: The official source of news, information, and all things Xavier basketball (men’s and women’s).

5. Rick Broering, @RickBroering: Out of season he tweets about many topics, but he provides content for MusketeerReport on Scout.com.

6. Mike DeCourcy, The Sporting News, @tsnmike: The former Enquirer reporter is one of the nation’s top college basketball reporters and promotes the game well.

7. Andy Katz, ESPN, @ESPNAndyKatz: Also one of the top college basketball reporters in the business who breaks a lot of news.

8. Seth Davis, Sports Illustrated, @SethDavisHoops: Offers various opinions on Twitter; his weekly notebook during the season is a must-read.

9. Jeff Goodman, ESPN, @GoodmanESPN: Often an entertaining and informative read.

10. Jay Bilas, ESPN, @JayBilas: He’s smart, funny, thoughtful, and can be opinionated.

MUSKETEERS ON TWITTER

Here are some Twitter accounts of Xavier teams: • Baseball—@XavierBASE • Men’s Basketball—@XavierMBB • Women’s Basketball—@XavierWBB • Men’s Golf—@XavierMGOLF • Women’s Golf—@XavierWGOLF • Men’s Soccer—XavierMSOC • Men’s/Women’s Swimming— @XavierSWIM

• Men’s Tennis—@XavierMTEN • Women’s Tennis—@XavierWTEN • Track/XC—@XavierXCTF • Volleyball—@XavierVBALL • Women’s Soccer—@XavierWSOC

INSTAGRAM Insta

MUSKETEERS ON INSTAGRAM

Instagram is a photo sharing social media platform. It’s all about the images, not the words.

Follow the men’s basketball program @xaviermbb and see some nifty infographics and nice images. There is also @xuathletics that is more general and @xavieruniversity that is more university-related.

FACEBOOK GETTING ON FACEBOOK

Another way to follow Xavier is via Facebook, which has more than a billion users worldwide.

Facebook allows you to interact, share photos, and find people. Let’s get you prepared for the Facebook experience.

Go to Facebook.com and enter your full name, e-mail address, and a password. Your password must include both letters and numbers. Select your gender, then your birthday.

After you have entered this data, click on the signup button.

Go to the e-mail that you used to register.

Open the confirmation message from Facebook. Click on the verification link to show that a computer is not creating the account.

Now you can access Facebook.

WHO TO FOLLOW ON FACEBOOK

There’s a difference between Twitter and Facebook. While Twitter is built around the posting of short 140-character messages— a.k.a. tweets—Facebook, which recently celebrated its 10th anniversary, is an efficient social networking site for connecting and maintaining connection with a group of people who you want to communicate with or share similar interests.

On Twitter, you can search and follow pretty much anyone you want. Facebook is different. People have personal pages and have to accept your friend request. Even if you watched a former player for four years and feel like you know him, don’t assume he will accept a friend request from a name he does not recognize.

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TECHNOLOGY

We do not recommend “friending” current players or even former players who don’t know you.

To follow Xavier on Facebook, follow: • Xavier University (university-wide information) • Xavier Musketeers (athletics information) • #1 Xavier Musketeers Fans

You may fi nd others but they are not as active. On these Facebook pages, you will fi nd other Xavier fans.

TALK TO EACH OTHER

The best places for Xavier fans to interact with each other are: • xavierhoops.com: As of early September, there were 2,745 members and more than 18,000 discussion threads.

There are discussions about men’s basketball, of course, but also other XU sports, recruiting, and the BIG EAST Conference.

• musketeermadness.com: Here you find separate chatboards for men’s and women’s basketball, an archive of stories about both programs, and some key links to other websites.

• MusketeerScoop.com: Part of the rivals.com network.

• MusketeerReport.com: Part of the scout.com network.

WEBSITES XAVIER’S NEW-ANDIMPROVED SITE

These are places in which you can discuss the relevant, mundane, and minutia of the program, dissecting every game, every comment, every article and, well, much more.

It’s not always rational. It’s sometimes polarizing. But it’s rarely boring.

Oh, and occasionally a fan from an enemy team pops in to stir things up. That’s always fun—or annoying.

The official website of the Xavier athletic department, goxavier.com, relaunched October 23 with a new look and cleaner navigation.

This is where you fi nd photos, video, and all kinds of information about every sport at Xavier.

Here are five things to look for:

If you can’t get enough recruiting news, bookmark these sites that provide some of the best breaking news and profi les on recruits:

1. Responsive design that makes the site more compatible and user-friendly for all mobile platforms.

2. espn.go.com/college-sports/ basketball/recruiting/index (Twitter: @ESPNRNHoops)

2. Brighter, cleaner look to the pages.

3. Streamlined navigation tools.

3. future150.com (Twitter: @Future150)

4. Exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the men’s basketball program.

4. hoopniks.com (Twitter: @Hoopniks)

5. New exclusive video content.

5. basketballrecruiting.rivals.com (Twitter: @Rivals)

In addition, there will be a regular video feature at least once a week using players or others in the program playing the role of reporter, interviewing players and staff connected with the program.

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KEEP TABS ON RECRUITING

1. 247sports.com (Twitter: @247Sports)

6. scouthoops.scout.com (Twitter: @scoutrecruiting) 7. verbalcommits.com (Twitter: @verbalcommits)

KEEP TABS ON RANKINGS

If you are obsessed with college basketball rankings, especially as the NCAA Tournament nears, these are sites you will have fun checking out: 1. dancecard.unf.edu: Jay Coleman (University of North Florida), Mike DuMond (Charles River Associates), and Allen Lynch (Mercer University) developed a “Dance Card” formula to predict at-large bids to the NCAA Tournament. Their website says it was 35 of 36 last season.

2. kenpom.com: Pomeroy College Basketball Ratings.

3. Live-RPI.com: Ratings Percentage Index rankings in real time.

4. sagarin.com: Jeff Sagarin’s computer ratings for college basketball run on usatoday.com. Sagarin has ratings for many other sports.

5. TeamRankings.com: This also provides ratings for several sports. Click on NCAAB for college basketball. You can find all different kinds of predictions here.

BLOGS BLOGS TO FOLLOW

Of the countless college basketball-related blogs on the internet, we recommend checking out these five: 1. Shannon Russell, Cincinnati Enquirer, cincinnati.com/sports/xavier: Provides an insider’s view of Xavier athletics.

2. Rick Broering, MusketeerReport.com: Powered by Scout.com, it has excellent info on XU recruiting and chat rooms to debate with friends.

3. Banners on the Parkway, bannersontheparkway.com: An SB Nation website where blogging brothers Joel and Brad Dobney submit posts, facilitate dialogue, and interact with commenters on Xavier hoops.

4. Mike DeCourcy, The Sporting News, sportingnews.com/author/mikedecourcy: Excellent features and commentary on games.

5. Andy Katz, ESPN.com, espn.go.com/ mens-college-basketball/blog/_/ name/katz_andy: Must-read for the college basketball junkie.

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TECHNOLOGY

KEEPING UP WITH THE

BIG EAST

THIS LIST IS NOT ALL-INCLUSIVE, BUT IF YOU WANT TO FOLLOW XAVIER’S BIG EAST CONFERENCE OPPONENTS, THESE ARE GOOD PLACES TO START.

BIG EAST CONFERENCE Website BIGEAST.com Facebook facebook.com/BIGEASTconference Instagram @BIGEASTCONF Twitter @BIGEAST @BIGEASTchamps (championships) @BIGEASTMBB (men’s basketball) @BIGEASTWBB (women’s basketball) OTHER Website holylandofhoops.com (fan site) Twitter @HolyLandofHoops Website bigeastcoastbias.com (fan site) Twitter @becb_sbn Twitter @BigEastDaily (breaking news)

BUTLER BUTLER BULLDOGS Website butlersports.com Facebook Butlerbulldogs Twitter @ButlerMBB Instagram @ButlerMBB THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR (Reporter: Michael Pointer) Website indystar.com Blog indystar.com/blog/butler Twitter @michaelpointer OTHER Website victoryfirelight.com (fan site) Twitter @ButlerVictory

OTHER Website bluedemonsnation.com Twitter @BlueDemonNation Website WeAreDePaul.com Twitter @WeAreDePaul

GEORGETOWN GEORGETOWN HOYAS Website guhoyas.com Facebook Georgetown Athletics Twitter @georgetownhoyas Instagram @georgetownathletics WASHINGTON TIMES (Reporter: Marc Lancaster) Website washingtontimes.com Blog washingtontimes.com/staff/marc-lancaster Twitter @MarcLancaster CSNWASHINGTON.COM (Reporter: Ben Standig) Website CSNWashington.com Blog csnwashington.com/georgetown-hoyas Twitter @BenStandig HOYAREPORT.COM (Reporter: Ron Bailey) Website HoyaReport.com Twitter @HoyaNation HOYAS 247 (Reporter: Michael Bohlin) Website georgetown.247sports.com Twitter @MBohlin247 OTHER Website casualhoya.com Twitter @CasualHoya

CREIGHTON

MARQUETTE

CREIGHTON BLUEJAYS Website gocreighton.com Facebook Creighton University Athletics Twitter @BluejayMBB @cucoachmac (Coach Greg McDermott) OMAHA WORLD-HERALD (Reporter: Steve Pivovar) Website Omaha.com Blog omaha.com/creighton/blog/ Twitter @pivowh OTHER Website bluejaybanter.com Twitter @bluejaybanter Website whiteandbluereview.com Twitter @whitebluereview

MARQUETTE GOLDEN EAGLES Website gomarquette.com Facebook Marquette Men’s Basketball Twitter @MarquetteMBB @steve_wojo (Coach Steve Wojciechowski) MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL (Reporter: Michael Hunt) Website jsonline.com Blog jsonline.com/sports/goldeneagles Twitter @MichaelHuntMJS OTHER Website anonymouseagle.com Twitter @AnonymousEagle Website crackedsidewalks.com Twitter @CrackedSidewlks Website painttouches.com Twitter @PaintTouches

DEPAUL DEPAUL BLUE DEMONS Website depaulbluedemons.com Facebook DePaul Athletics Twitter @DePaulAthletics @DePaulHoops @CoachPurnell (Coach Oliver Purnell) CHICAGO SUN TIMES (Reporter: Toni Ginnetti) Website suntimes.com Twitter @toniginnetti CHICAGO TRIBUNE (Reporter: Chris Hine) Website chicagotribune.com Twitter @christopherhine

XavierNationMagazine.com

PROVIDENCE PROVIDENCE FRIARS Website friars.com Facebook Providence College Friars Twitter @PCAthletics Instagram @pc_athletics @CoachCooleyPC (Coach Ed Cooley) PROVIDENCE JOURNAL (Reporter: Kevin McNamara) Website providencejournal.com

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Blog providencejournal.com/sports/college/ Twitter @KevinMcNamara33 SCOUT FRIARS/PCBB1917.COM (Reporter: Mike Hopkins) Website ScoutFriars.com Blog pcbb1917.com Facebook Mike.Hopkins.8587 Twitter @pcbb1917 OTHER Website Friarblog.com Twitter @FriarFrenzy

SETON HALL SETON HALL PIRATES Website shupirates.com Facebook Seton Hall Pirates Twitter @SetonHallMBB @KevinWillard (Coach Kevin Willard) Instagram @shuathletics GANNETT NEW JERSEY (Jerry Carino) Website mycentraljersey.com Blog blogs.mycentraljersey.com/hoopshaven/ Twitter @NJHoopsHaven NJ ADVANCE MEDIA (Reporter: Andrew Garda) Website nj.com/setonhall Blog northjersey.com/sports/college-sports/ seton-hall-sports Twitter @Andrew_Garda NORTHJERSEY.COM (Reporter: J.P. Pelzman) Website northjersey.com Blog northjersey.com/sports/college-sports/ seton-hall-sports Twitter @JPPelzman OTHER Website southorangejuice.com Twitter @SOrangeJuice

ST. JOHN’S ST. JOHN’S RED STORM Website stjbasketball.com Facebook St. John’s Red Storm Twitter @StJohnsBBall @SJUCoachLavin (Coach Steve Lavin) NEW YORK DAILY NEWS (Reporter: Roger Rubin) Website nydailynews.com Twitter @RogRubin OTHER Website rumbleinthegarden.com Twitter @rumbleSBN

VILLANOVA VILLANOVA WILDCATS Website villanova.com Facebook Villanova University Athletics Twitter @NovaAthletics @VUCoachJWright (Coach Jay Wright) PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER (Reporter: Joe Juliano) Website inquirer.com/sports philly.com/sports Blog philly.com/philly/blogs/supernova/ Twitter @joejulesinq DELAWARE COUNTY DAILY TIMES (Reporter: Terry Toohey) Website delcotimes.com Twitter @TerryToohey OTHER Website vuhoops.com Twitter @VUhoops

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TECHNOLOGY

XAVIER NATION’S

Twitter 100

WHETHER YOU ARE STARTING AN ACCOUNT FROM SCRATCH OR HAVE BEEN TWEETING FOR YEARS, YOU SHOULD BE FOLLOWING THESE ACCOUNTS.

Jeff Eisenberg @JeffEisenberg Yahoo Sports Reid Forgrave @ReidForgrave FOX Sports Fox Sports: Hoops @HoopsonFOX Fran Fraschilla @franfraschilla ESPN Pete Gillen @Gillenhoops Former Xavier head coach/ CBS Sports Network Jeff Goodman @GoodmanESPN ESPN

XAVIER PLAYERS Remy Abell @23Abell Larry Austin Jr. @LarryAustinJr Trevon Bluiett @TrevonBluiett Kevin Coker @KevoCoker24 Dee Davis @DeeDavisX Myles Davis @_MDavis15 James Farr @JFarr2 Makinde London @makinde_london J.P. Macura @jpmacura Sean O’Mara @S3AN_54 Andrew Mitchell @A_Mitchell5 Jalen Reynolds @JalenReynolds

Joe Sullivan @JoeSully4 Xavier graduate assistant Cintas Center @CintasCenter Xavier Admissions @XUadmissions Xavier All for One @XavierAFO Xavier Athletics @XUAthletics Xavier Basketball @XavierMBB Xavier Center for Mission and Identity @TweetIgnatian Xavier Gameday @XavierGameday Xavier Managers @XavierManagers Xavier Sports Properties @XavierSports

LOCAL/REGIONAL MEDIA Mike Berk @mike_berk Local 12 Ken Broo @kenbroo WCPO Joe Danneman @FOX19Joe FOX19 Paul Daugherty @EnquirerDoc The Cincinnati Enquirer Bill Dennison @seg700wlw 700 WLW Mo Egger @MoEgger1530 ESPN 1530/700 WLW Kevin Goheen @FSOhio_KGoheen FOX Sports Ohio

Gus Johnson @gusjohnson FOX Sports Andy Katz @ESPNAndyKatz ESPN Stuart Mandel @slmandel FOX Sports Kami Mattioli @kmattio Sporting News Gary Parrish @GaryParrishCBS CBS Sports Jon Rothstein @JonRothstein CBS Sports Dick Vitale @DickieV ESPN

Matt Stainbrook @mstainbrook40

Xavier Student Involvement @XUinvolvement

Tim Stainbrook @Stainbrook21

Xavier Tickets @XavierTickets

Edmond Sumner @edmondsumner

Xavier University @XavierUniv

Brad Johansen @bradjohansen Local 12

NCAA TOURNAMENT/ RATINGS

FORMER XAVIER PLAYERS

Lance McAlister @LanceMcAlister 700 WLW

Jay Coleman @AnalyticsProf Sports analytics professor

Lindsay Patterson @lindzpatterson ESPN 1530

Dance Card @DanceCard3 Predicts NCAA Tournament bids

John Popovich @Popo_WCPOSports WCPO

Joe Lunardi @ESPNLunardi ESPN/bracketologist

Jeremy Rauch @FOX19jeremy FOX19

Ken Pomeroy @kenpomeroy kenpom.com

XAVIER COACHES/ STAFF/UNIVERSITY Rick Carter @rickcarter23 Xavier assistant coach Tom Eiser @EiserXUSports Xavier associate AD for communications Jeremy Growe @jeremygrowe Xavier director of basketball operations Brian Hicks @XUmktgguy Xavier associate AD for external relations Matt Jennings @_mattjennings Xavier strength and conditioning coach Chris Mack @CoachChrisMack Xavier head coach Michael Massa @mmassa05 Xavier graduate assistant Aaron Meis @hesthedean Xavier dean of admission and financial aid Mario Mercurio @MarioMercurio Xavier director of basketball administration Mike Pegues @CoachPegues Xavier assistant coach Ty Sampson @XU_TySampson Xavier graduate assistant Travis Steele @tasteele Xavier assistant coach

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Derrick Brown @D_Brown4 Lokomotiv Kuban Krasnodar, Krasnodar, Russia Semaj Christon @SemajChriston Oklahoma City Blue, NBA Development League Jordan Crawford @Jcraw55 Xinjiang Flying Tigers, Ürümqi, Xinjiang, China Justin Doellman @J_Doellman FC Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain Pat Kelsey @patkelsey Winthrop University head coach, Rock Hill, S.C. Dante Jackson @CoachJacksonNKU Northern Kentucky University assistant coach, Highland Heights, Ky. Brian Thornton @BrianThornton2 Ball State University assistant coach, Muncie, Ind.

Elise Jesse @EliseJesseWLWT WLWT

Shannon Russell @slrussell The Cincinnati Enquirer George Vogel @vogel_wlwt WLWT Jeff Wallner @JeffWallner Sports Xchange

RECRUITING Rick Broering @musketeerreport Musketeer Report/Scout.com Evan Daniels @EvanDaniels Scout.com

NATIONAL MEDIA

Brian Snow @BSnowScout Scout.com

Erin Andrews @ErinAndrews FOX Sports

Adam Zagoria @AdamZagoria NBA.com

Nicole Auerbach @NicoleAuerbach USA Today

David West @D_West30 Indiana Pacers, Entering 12th NBA season

Jay Bilas @JayBilas ESPN

Darnell Williams @coachdwill Kentucky State University assistant coach, Frankfort, Ky.

Austin Croshere @AustinCroshere FOX Sports

Steve Wolf @swolfhoops College basketball analyst, CBS Sports Network

Dan Wetzel @DanWetzel Yahoo Sports

Seth Davis @SethDavisHoops Sports Illustrated Mike DeCourcy @tsnmike Sporting News

FAN SITES Banners on the Parkway @BannersParkway Dana & Victory @danaandvictory Musketeer Madness @muskiemadness Xavier Buzz @xavierbuzztap XavierHoops.com @XavierHoops Xavier Nation @XUNation

XavierNationMagazine.com

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

Kevin Frey scored the Musketeers’ last four points in their 66–64 upset of No. 1-ranked Cincinnati on Dec. 18, 1999, in the Crosstown Shootout. Frey made two free throws with 29 seconds remaining and drove in for this layup with 8.9 seconds left.

WATCH AND LEARN

KEVIN FREY PREACHES FUNDAMENTALS TO YOUNG PLAYERS IN NEW MEXICO.

BY RODNEY McKISSIC

L

P H OT O G R A P H B Y G R E G R U S T

LOOKING BACK AT KEVIN FREY’S CAREER AT XAVIER, IT’S NOT SURPRISING HE’S now teaching children the virtues of fundamental basketball.

As a four-year starter for the Musketeers from 1998 to 2002, he did all the things coaches love. He dove for loose balls, set screens to free up scorers, and played hurt yet managed to put up respectable career totals of 1,102 points and 710 rebounds in 130 games.

These days the former Xavier role player—best remembered for his clinching layup that knocked off No. 1 Cincinnati in the 1999 Crosstown Shootout—runs the highly successful Frey Basketball Academy in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which trains youngsters in basketball. He also coaches U8 and U12 AAU programs with an eye on someday becoming a college basketball coach. During training, Frey preaches the gospel of fundamentals.

“Everything is specific movement patterns,” he says. “We start off everything with 1,500 jump ropes, stationary ball handling, one ball, two ball, tennis balls, medicine balls where we’re tossing them back and forth. I got hooked pretty early.”

Frey credits his former coaches for showing him the way, from the late Skip Prosser and Thad Matta on the collegiate level, to Michael Cooper and Chucky Brown in the pros.

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“It’s amazing when you look back at the coaching that I’ve had throughout the years,” Frey says. “I just try and take a piece of what they’ve done and mold it into my own thing.”

Frey started conducting coaching clinics in his hometown of Midland, Michigan, after graduating from Xavier in 2002. Teaching players the basics in turn enhanced Frey’s game as he prepared to play overseas.

“Throughout the summer I would go all over the state of Michigan, into Ohio and Illinois, and then I would go play overseas,” says Frey, who spent nine seasons playing in Europe, Argentina, and Chile. “Going back to the core foundation of drills allowed my personal game to go through the roof.”

Frey was playing in Germany when he was injured, and while rehabbing in the states, he got an opportunity to play for the Atlanta Hawks summer league team. He played well and the team considered bringing him into its training camp that fall.

“That got me thinking that maybe I should stay home for the year and see if I can try and catch on somewhere,” Frey says.

“So I entered in the draft for the D-League [the NBA Development League].”

Frey was selected by the D-League’s New Mexico Thunderbirds in the eighth round in 2005. The team was coached by Cooper, the former Los Angeles Lakers great.

Little did Frey know but he was home.

His stay with the Thunderbirds lasted just three games, long enough to meet his future wife, Jessica, land a position at HewlettPackard (where he works full-time) and settle in Rio Rancho, New Mexico. The Freys have two sons—7-year-old Kody and 4-year-old Knox, who can be found in the family backyard knocking down jumpers deep into the night.

“It’s pitch black out and he’s still trying to shoot it,” Frey says. “I love it.”

When his boys get older, Frey would like to pursue a coaching career in college basketball. “The college game is something that I would be interested in,” he says. “It’s one of my goals to land on somebody’s staff so I can learn from some of the best coaches out there.”

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WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

SPEAKING SOFTLY

WHEN HER PLAYING DAYS WERE OVER, JENNIFER PHILLIPS WENT TO WORK IN SPECIAL EDUCATION. BY RODNEY McKISSIC

Jennifer Phillips finished with 16 points and 7 rebounds in a tough 86–84 NCAA Tournament loss to top-seeded Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut, on March 14, 1999.

J

JENNIFER PHILLIPS HAS ALWAYS BEEN THE SERENE, HUMBLE TYPE—AND 13 SEASONS after she completed her basketball career at Xavier University she remains the same.

When a reporter called Phillips, now Jennifer Brenning, about writing a “Where Are They Now” story, her immediate response was, “Why do you want to do a story on me?”

“Well, you scored a gang of points, something like 1,600, right?”

Here Brenning, a 2006 Xavier Hall of Fame inductee, chuckles: “Yeah, something like that.”

And 13 years later, she remains a success off the court. As an intervention specialist at Hilliard Bradley High School, on the western edge of Columbus, Ohio, she teaches math classes to special education students. She took a circuitous route to the classroom: After completing her career at Xavier in 2001, the Elida, Ohio, native received her undergraduate degree in sports management and spent three years doing pharmaceutical sales for Pfizer.

Brenning later earned her master’s degree in workforce development from Ohio State and became a business teacher at Whitehall-Yearling High School in Whitehall, Ohio, then Upper Arlington High in Upper Arlington, Ohio. Brenning, who entered her ninth year as a teacher in the fall, has worked at Hilliard Bradley the last five years.

“It’s challenging but definitely rewarding,” Brenning says. “One of the benefits is having

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smaller class sizes, so you spend a lot of individualized time with the kids. I feel I’m really able to help them grow and learn.’’

Her husband of 10 years, Ty Brenning, was a three-year starter for the Xavier baseball team. He now coaches baseball at Olentangy Liberty High School. They have a daughter Jetta, 7, and two sons: Knox, 5, and Drake, 2½. The kids have their own sporty sides: Jetta is a good soccer and basketball player, while Knox has taken a liking to baseball. Eventually they will learn all about mom’s impressive basketball career.

Brenning was drafted in the third round of the WNBA draft by the Charlotte Sting in 2001 and attended two weeks of training camp before being released. She drew interest from at least two teams overseas, but the desire to continue her basketball career had waned. “Getting cut [from Charlotte] was disappointing,” Brenning says. “I was just looking to move on and thought that ship had sailed.”

Throughout her collegiate career, Brenning experienced an avalanche of success. She was the gem of Melanie Balcomb’s recruiting class in 1997 and was picked to the preseason Atlantic 10 Conference all-rookie team.

She finished eighth in career scoring with 1,633 points and fourth in career rebounds with 742. Arguably the program’s most decorated player to ever play in the Atlantic 10, Brenning earned league player of the year honors following the 2000–01 season.

Brenning’s senior year coincided with one of the best seasons in Xavier women’s basketball history. Brenning, who was fifth in the nation in field-goal percentage, helped guide the Musketeers to the Elite Eight with a stunning 80–65 triumph over No. 3 Tennessee en route to a dauntless 31–3 record.

What’s even more impressive is before suiting up for XU, Brenning was diagnosed with a congenital heart condition which required surgery. After being cleared to play, she began assembling her stirring legacy.

“I wanted to help build a program,” she says. “It kind of worked out that way. I was part of a pretty big recruiting class and we all in our own way had a pretty big impact.”

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SEASON PREVIEWS XAVIER UNIVERSITY HAS APPROXIMATELY 280 STUDENT-ATHLETES PARTICIPATING IN 18 SPORTS DURING THE 2014–15 ACADEMIC YEAR. HERE IS THE OUTLOOK FOR EACH TEAM.

THE ENQUIRER /// TUESDAY, MAY 27, 2014 C1

PENN STATE’S FRANKLIN OBSESSES OVER EVERY DETAIL PAGE C8

sports

Reds’ bullpen staying course [ Page C5 ]

BASKETBALL MEN’S COACH: Chris Mack (Xavier ’92), sixth season OUTLOOK: Mack welcomes back six scholarship letter winners from the 2013–14 team that finished third in XU’s first season in the BIG EAST Conference. Senior center Matt Stainbrook, an honorable mention 2014 All-BIG EAST Conference selection by the league coaches, and senior point guard Dee Davis are the returning starters from last season. Mack welcomes a talented group of seven newcomers that includes a six-member freshman recruiting class ranked in the top 20 in the nation.

AP/JASON DECROW

BENGALS INSIDER

OTAs will provide a small glimpse of what’s to come PAUL DEHNER JR. @pauldehnerjr

From the field to front office and well outside the walls of Paul Brown Stadium, I bring to life the news and personalities defining the Bengals.

Reach me at pdehnerjr@enquirer.com.

CINCINNATI.COM

The Bengals won’t secure January success with the opening of organized team activities and Phase Three of the offseason program Tuesday. But the next few weeks won’t be devoid of developments, either.

No tackling will be permitted, and don’t look for pads. The program increases in intensity only because full 11-on-11 drills and other variations are allowed for the first time this offseason.

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@ENQUIRER

The most intrigue stems from the first look at the practice presence of new coordinators, Hue Jackson and Paul Guenther. This won’t exactly be an amp up for Steelers week, but tempo and mentality have been buzzwords since their hires. They’ll be out to establish both from the first practice.

These 10 OTA sessions that transpire over the next month greet a team with the vast majority of start-

ers returning. Few positions would be considered up for grabs. Most of the position battles will be saved for when the pads come on in July and special teams acumen can enter the equation. But these sessions can be particularly interesting for the skill positions considering the lack of contact allowed inside.

Here’s four story lines worth See BENGALS, Page C11

SPORTS EDITOR: Angel Rodriguez, arodriguez@enquirer.com

Xavier’s baseball team graced the sports cover of The Cincinnati Enquirer after the Musketeers defeated Creighton in May to win the 2014 BIG EAST championship and advance to the College World Series.

C OV E R C O U R T E S Y T H E C I N C I N N AT I E N Q U I R E R

BASEBALL COACH: Scott Googins (Ohio Wesleyan ’92), 10th season OUTLOOK: A 12-man class joins the reigning BIG EAST champions. Googins also returns a number of top performers from last year’s team.

Junior catcher Daniel Rizzie earned a nod to the All-BIG EAST First Team, as well as the BIG EAST and NCAA Nashville Regional All-Tournament Teams. Seniors Derek Hasenbeck and Brian Bruenning each collected All-BIG EAST

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Second-Team honors. The Musketeers also return sophomore left-hander Trent Astle, who threw a complete-game shutout against Creighton in the championship game of the BIG EAST Tournament.

NOTEWORTHY: The 2014 team defeated perennial NCAA Tournament participant Clemson at the Vanderbilt regional. The Musketeers earned a berth to the national tournament by winning three straight games to claim the BIG EAST Championship in Brooklyn.

NOTEWORTHY: Xavier has made eight of the last nine NCAA Tournaments and 12 of the last 14. Only 13 schools have been to at least eight NCAA Tournaments in the last nine years: Duke, Kansas, Gonzaga, Michigan State, and Wisconsin are at nine, while Xavier, Texas, Pittsburgh, North Carolina, Villanova, Marquette, Ohio State, and Louisville are at eight.

WOMEN’S COACH: Brian Neal (Northern Kentucky ’91), second season OUTLOOK: After being plagued by injuries throughout most of his first season, Neal has reloaded his team. A fiveperson freshman class fills out the Musketeer roster, plus the addition of Maleeka Kynard, a fifth-year transfer from Ohio State, assures that Xavier won’t be caught shorthanded this season. The Musketeers also return All-BIG EAST freshman team honoree Maddison Blackwell.

NOTEWORTHY: Xavier earned its first ever BIG EAST victory against St. John’s on January 5, 2014. The Red Storm went on to win the BIG EAST regularseason title and received an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament. DePaul earned the BIG EAST’s automatic bid for the 2013–14 season. From 1999 to 2011, Xavier women’s basketball made nine appearances in the NCAA Tournament. The Musketeers advanced to the Elite Eight in 2001 and 2010.

CROSS COUNTRY MEN’S COACH: Ryan Orner (Towson ’99), third season OUTLOOK: Orner returned four of his top five finishers from the 2013 NCAA Great Lakes Regional, where the Xavier men’s cross country team finished 26th. Senior Cory Zielinksi led the way at the 2013 regional while senior Connor Buchholz and sophomores Carter Macey and Aaron Peterson rounded out the top five for the team. Orner brought in a class of three freshmen to round out the squad.

NOTEWORTHY: Xavier men’s cross country finished sixth in its first trip to the BIG EAST Championship. Macey led the team at the conference championship as a freshman, finishing 41st with a time of 26:35.

WOMEN’S COACH: Ryan Orner (Towson ’99), third season OUTLOOK: In 2013, Xavier set new standards for the program, placing fifth in the BIG EAST Championships in its first year. The team came in 10th place at the NCAA Great Lakes

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BIG EAST All-Academic Team.

The Women’s Golf Coaches Association (WGCA) rated Xavier ninth in the country in team grade-point average, with a cumulative score of 3.729 for the 2013–14 school year. Additionally, six members of the Xavier University women’s golf team were named All-American Scholars by the WGCA: Christine Cash, Ariel McNair, Kristin Tan, Crutchfield, Howie, and Rachel Johnson. Former Xavier women’s golfer McNair was inducted into the African American Golfers Hall Of Fame (AAGHOF) in West Palm Beach, Florida, in 2013.

Xavier celebrates a goal with the fans during its 3–0 victory over the University of Cincinnati on Sept. 13, 2014, at the XU Soccer Complex.

Regional, just four spots out of contention for a team berth to the NCAA Championship. The jump the Musketeers made at the regionals in Orner’s two years (from 16th in 2011 to 10th in 2013) represented the largest two-year jump in the country.

Orner added eight new faces to his 10 returnees and continues to build.

NOTEWORTHY: The Fischer twins, Abby and Clare, made a lasting impact on the Xavier program. Abby started the 2013 cross country season off on a high note, winning the 2013 Queen City Invitational and leading the women’s team to a first-place finish. Clare ended the season with a Xavier milestone, qualifying for the NCAA Cross Country Championships, the first Xavier cross country or track athlete, male or female, to do so. Both Abby and Clare graduated from Xavier in 2014.

GOLF MEN’S COACH: Doug Steiner (Capital ’83), 27th season OUTLOOK: Steiner returns six Musketeers from last year’s team that claimed fifth at the BIG EAST Championship.

Among the returnees is senior Korey Ward, a unanimous selection to the 2013–14 All-BIG EAST team. At last season’s BIG EAST Championship, Ward shot an even-par 72 in the final round to take a share of 16th

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place. Xavier also adds three newcomers.

NOTEWORTHY: Xavier will play host to the Xavier Invitational in Cincinnati on April 20 and 21, 2015. This is the first tournament the men have hosted in the Greater Cincinnati area since 2009. Former Musketeer Jason Kokrak is currently playing on the PGA Tour, while a number of other former Xavier golfers are playing professionally on the Web.com Tour and PGA Tour Latinoamérica.

Between 2001 and 2012, Xavier men’s golf appeared in the NCAA Tournament nine times including five as a team and four individual appearances.

WOMEN’S COACH: Tom Elfers (Ohio State ’72), ninth season OUTLOOK: Elfers has much of the talent back from the 2013– 14 team that placed fourth at the BIG EAST Championship.

Senior Abby Smith, who took 11th at the tournament, and junior Shane Crutchfield, who placed 12th, were both named to the 2014 All-BIG EAST Team.

Elfers also has sophomore Grace Howie, who collected a top-20 finish at the BIG EAST Championship when she shot a 10-over 82 to take 16th place.

NOTEWORTHY: Elfers has announced that he will retire after this season. All seven members of the 2013–14 Xavier women’s golf team were named to the

SOCCER MEN’S COACH: Andy Fleming (Marist ’97), fifth season OUTLOOK: Building on last year’s tied-for-third-place BIG EAST finish, Xavier returned its third- and fourth-leading scorers, forwards Jalen Brown and Calum Latham, as well as preseason All-BIG EAST honoree Will Walker, who returned as a red-shirt senior. Fleming also added 11 newcomers to the roster in a class rated No. 26 in the nation by College Soccer News. That marks Fleming’s fifth nationally-rated recruiting class.

NOTEWORTHY: Xavier is one of just seven schools to have multiple top 25 Major League Soccer Super Draft picks, including Luke Spencer (No. 22 to New England in 2013) and Nick Hagglund (No. 10 to Toronto in 2014). Matt Walker also signed with the Columbus Crew in 2014. Xavier is just one of 17 programs to make at least three of the past four NCAA Tournaments. It also ranks in the nation’s top 15 for overall wins since 2010 and is one of 12 programs with four straight 10win seasons. Xavier soccer has captured four straight NSCAA Team Academic awards and seven in the past eight years; the 2013 team had the thirdhighest GPA in NCAA Division I and the highest private school team GPA in Division I, while nationally it was bettered only

by Cal Tech and MIT.

WOMEN’S COACH: Woody Sherwood (Xavier ’91), fifth season OUTLOOK: Sherwood added eight new faces to the roster and brought back a strong core from last season’s 9–8–1 squad—Xavier’s first winning season since 2005. The Musketeers have 18 returning players from 2013, including senior captains Katie Schweer and Katie Markesbery. Sophomore defender Courtney Kobashigawa was named to the preseason All-BIG EAST second team by College Sports Madness.

NOTEWORTHY: The top six finishers in the BIG EAST regular-season standings earn a spot in the 2014 BIG EAST Championship, which will be held November 4–9, with the winner earning an NCAA Tournament berth. Three teams from the BIG EAST (Georgetown, Marquette, and St. John’s) made the 2013 NCAA Women’s Soccer Championship field. Xavier made the NCAA Tournament in 1998 and 2000. Sherwood also has experience as a Musketeer, winning four letters from Xavier while playing both at midfield and defense.

SWIMMING MEN’S COACH: Brent MacDonald (Valparaiso ’03), sixth season OUTLOOK: The reigning BIG EAST Champions lost BIG EAST Most Outstanding Performer Chad Thompson, but return a solid core of the 2013–14 team.

Sophomore Luke Johanns collected five gold medals at last season’s conference championship, earning a spot on the All-BIG EAST team. Six other gold medalists, and All-BIG EAST honorees, return to help Xavier repeat as champions.

NOTEWORTHY: The 2013–14 Xavier men’s swim team holds the distinction of winning Xavier’s first BIG EAST Conference championship, which also marked the first conference championship in the program’s history. After starting the competition with a deficit due to not competing in the diving

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portion of the competition, the Musketeer men made up that ground in their first day of competition and never looked back. In addition to the championship, MacDonald was named BIG EAST Coach of the Year and Thompson was named BIG EAST Most Outstanding Performer after collecting six gold medals.

WOMEN’S COACH: Brent MacDonald (Valparaiso ’03), sixth season OUTLOOK: The team features eight All-BIG EAST performers from last season’s team, which placed third in the league.

Among the returnees is senior Carolyn Stewart, who won gold in the 100 backstroke and silver in the 200 backstroke in addition to earning medals in four relays.

NOTEWORTHY: The 2013–14 women’s swim relay teams won four medals at the BIG EAST Championship, claiming silver in the 200 medley relay and the 400 free relay, and taking bronze in the 200 free and 400 medley relays. The Musketeers return the full teams for each of these relays.

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COACH: Eric Toth (Cincinnati ’94), eighth season OUTLOOK: The Musketeers lost two All-BIG EAST performers, Mesa Mei and Jimmy Roebker, to graduation but return seven from last year’s BIG EAST semifinalist team. Toth brought in three new faces, Gabriel Chaves Araujo, Connor LaFavre, and Arthur Stefani. Stefani and Chaves Araujo both come to Xavier from Brazil, creating a unique opportunity for team members to not only help their teammates acclimate to a new place, but to learn about their homes as well.

NOTEWORTHY: 2014 Xavier graduate Jimmy Roebker was awarded the BIG EAST Michael Tranghese Postgraduate Leadership Award. The scholarship is awarded annually to one male and one female student-athlete

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from a BIG EAST–sponsored sport who have been admitted to a degree-granting or professional program for the following year and who have demonstrated leadership through excellence in academic credentials, athletic performance, and depth of commitment to service within the institution or the community. The Musketeer men made three straight appearances in the NCAA Tournament from 2008 to 2010.

WOMEN’S COACH: Eric Toth (Cincinnati ’94), eighth season OUTLOOK: Toth returned all but three members of last year’s BIG EAST Championship runners-up, including conference Rookie of the Year Sydney Liggins. The Musketeers also returned All-BIG EAST junior Alex Brinker, as well as senior Daniella Patton, who competed in the 2014 Thomas E. Price Cincinnati Metropolitan Tennis Tournament. Xavier also brought in a three-person freshman class that included Amina Ismail, who competed in the finals of the 2014 Cincinnati Met. NOTEWORTHY: Assistant coach Doug Matthews won his third city championship at the 2014 Cincinnati Met, defeating Xavier men’s tennis junior Zach Mueck on the way to the championship. In addition to his three singles titles, Matthews owns five titles in men’s doubles and six in mixed doubles.

NOTEWORTHY: Tom Ohlman finished an illustrious four-year career with a solid effort in the 3,000-meter steeplechase with a time of 9:12.90 at the NCAA East Regional in Jacksonville, Florida. Ohlman graduated in 2014 as one of the best runners in school history with five individual school records, two trips as an individual to the NCAA First Round competition, in addition to All-Great Lakes honors.

WOMEN’S COACH: Ryan Orner (Towson ’99), third season OUTLOOK: Orner returns a solid core of last year’s team, including All-BIG EAST performer Mercedes Oliver, who won medals in two events at the BIG EAST Championships.

Orner also brought in a class of 12 that includes Penn State transfer Meghan Vogel. Vogel made national headlines in 2012 while at West LibertySalem High School for her act of sportsmanship when she helped her opponent across the finish line at the Ohio state championship meet.

NOTEWORTHY: 2014 Xavier graduate Clare Fischer completed her career by competing in the 10,000 meters at the 2014 NCAA East Regional.

Fischer used a strong final kick to earn a 21st-place finish in the 10k at the 2014 NCAA East Regional with a time of 35:08.98.

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VOLLEYBALL COACH: Mike Johnson (Washington ’03), fifth season OUTLOOK: Johnson added a highly touted six-player recruiting class to a strong core of returning players. Seniors Alex Blair and Aubree Smith, as well as sophomore Abbey Bessler, earned preseason All-BIG EAST honors. Newcomers Kristen Massa and Jesse Earl, both ranked among the top 100 players nationally in the class of 2014, helped make up a top-25 recruiting class, Xavier’s first nationally ranked class in history. Massa is the daughter of Xavier Vice President Gary Massa, a member of the XU basketball 1,000-point club, and the niece of former Musketeer volleyball standout Barb “Pep” Massa and former XU coach and administrator Laurie Massa.

NOTEWORTHY: Xavier volleyball made an impression on the BIG EAST in its first year in the conference, finishing 12–4 and tied for second in the league.

Smith and Bessler, as well as 2014 graduate Alex Smith, earned first team All-BIG EAST honors and AVCA All-American Honorable Mention in 2012.

Additionally, Blair earned a place on the All-BIG EAST second team following last season. Xavier earned berths to the NCAA Tournament in 2001 and 2007.

TRACK AND FIELD (INDOOR & OUTDOOR MEN’S COACH: Ryan Orner (Towson ’99), third season OUTLOOK: Orner brings in a class of six new faces to join the team. In addition, the Musketeers return a number of upperclassmen, including All-BIG EAST performer John Kolibab, who broke his own school record for the high jump (indoor) at the BIG EAST Indoor Championship with a jump of 2 meters.

The Musketeers’ men’s swimming team captured the school’s first-ever BIG EAST championship last February. It was also the first conference title for Xavier’s men’s or women’s swimming teams.

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POST GAME INTERVIEW

EN GARDE, D’ARTAGNAN HE FIRES UP THE CROWD. HE CHEERS ON THE TEAM. HE KEEPS AN EYE ON THE BLUE BLOB. YEP, D’ARTAGNAN IS A BUSY GUY.

Not to start with a sensitive subject, but do people understand that you are not actually one of the Three Musketeers? Some do, but most assume I am. And that’s

can’t see under my puffy white sleeves, but I get goose bumps every time.

OK with me. My friends Athos, Porthos, and Aramis are good, fun, adventurous guys. They make sure I am included in most of their activities. Plus, how can I complain? It’s a statue of me that sits outside Cintas Center, right?

What’s your fondest memory? When Theo Nelson made a

I’d call upon all-time leading scorer Byron Larkin and Tu Holloway for sure. We would paint Cincinnati blue!

What’s it like sharing the spotlight with the Blue Blob? He’s like a

little brother to me.

He’s fun to hang out with during games, and he has a lot of energy. Now that he’s learned how to roll— literally roll—the fans love him. Kids really love the Blob. I just have to make sure the women still favor me.

What gets you amped before a game? I love

the anticipation of running the Xavier flag to center court. Nothing gets the crowd more pumped. The fireworks going off around me help a little, too. There’s nothing like those moments. You

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Do you draw inspiration from other mascots? That Mr.

Redlegs is a class act.

His mustache reigns s up r e m e . M i n e i s good, but his is on a whole different level.

Once I tried to extra curl mine to look more like his, but it didn’t really work. Luckily nobody was around to take photos. That would’ve blown up on Facebook.

Do you have any hidden talents? H ave

you ever seen me in the Mascot T-Ball Game at Great American Ball Park? I’ve got some mad skills. The game benefits the Reds Community Fund. In 2011, I was pretty dominant. Lucy Van Pelt from Peanuts and Rosie Red were there, and I have to say that the ladies dig the long ball.

No offense, but the Blue Blob can’t do that.

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Who would you team up with to form your own “Xavier Three Musketeers?” Easy.

half-court shot to win a million dollars at the 2001 Skyline Chili Crosstown Shootout.

That was cool. It was pretty funny when Nelson tackled the Blue Blob during the celebration. Better him than me is what I was thinking.

Cheer Louder.

Play Harder.

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