After a dominant 88-70 road win over Georgetown in Washington, DC on Saturday, Xavier is now 24-3 on the season (9-3 in the Big East). The Musketeers are currently ranked sixth in the RPI and are projected to be a top-two seed in the NCAA Tournament according to Bracket Matrix, a site that aggregates bracket projections from across the Internet. They are ranked 13th on KenPom, 13th in the Sagarin Ratings, and 17th on Team Rankings. But despite the gaudy win total and solid computer numbers, Xavier has generally flown under the radar nationally all season.
Xavier’s hectic 1-3-1 defense helps the Musketeers fluster opponents. (Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports)
The Musketeers have a legitimate top scoring option in sophomore Trevon Bluiett, who averages 15.3 points per game. Freshman Edmond Sumner also has the ability to score in bunches; he did so on Saturday, scoring a career high 22 points against the Hoyas. However, it’s Xavier’s defense, specifically its ability to switch between man-to-man and a 1-3-1 zone, that makes the Musketeers so dangerous. The zone, which has been mentioned in multiple iterations of Luke Winn’s Power Rankings over at Sports Illustrated, is Xavier’s X-factor. While Winn has noted that the Musketeers have gone to the zone a bit less during Big East play, the 1-3-1 has still been an effective way for Xavier to speed up opponents and force them into tough shots or turnovers.
The Musketeers’ zone differs in two noticeable ways from more traditional 1-3-1 defenses. It starts with either Sumner or sophomore J.P. Macura at the top of the zone. At 6’6″ and 6’5″ respectively, both players have the prototypical length required to play at the top of the zone, but it’s their tendency to pick up the defense near the half court line that makes the setup unique.
Confident in its rotations and unafraid of penetration into the zone’s gaps, Xavier is able to use this high pressure style to take opponents out of their normal offense. “We have a lot of length in that zone and we pressure the ball a lot. I think we just speed teams up and make them turn the ball over,” Macura said after the Georgetown win. Indeed, during the stretch when the Musketeers rolled out the zone in the first half, the Hoyas committed six turnovers, including this steal from Macura after a dose of hectic pressure.
The second major difference in the Xavier zone is Chris Mack‘s preference for his big man to play on the baseline, instead of a smaller forward. “It keeps our size in the lane so you can rebound out of it”, Mack says of the tactic. Given most zone defenses’ propensity to give up offensive rebounds, this is a potential way for Xavier to maintain control of its defensive glass. It’s worked, as the Musketeers rank 29th nationally in defensive rebound percentage, allowing opponents to grab only 25.7 percent of their own misses. Using the big man at the bottom of the zone also allows Xavier to neutralize opposing post players by forcing them to back up against a traditional big, not that smaller forward who will usually be running the baseline of a 1-3-1 zone. Xavier also uses guards to help double down on post touches, which helped the Musketeers render Georgetown’s Jessie Govan (5 points) ineffective on Saturday, just days after he had posted a career-high 27 points against Seton Hall.
The zone is beatable, however. This is why Mack says Xavier doesn’t use it at all times. “Our fans want to play it 41 minutes out of 40 in a game, but you can see in the first half when Georgetown hit a few threes that it’s not a cure-all,” he said. Mack wasn’t lying, as the Musketeers did abandon the 1-3-1 in the first half after the Hoyas knocked down three straight triples. Georgetown attempted 37 threes in the losing effort and many of them were open shots, but the Hoyas struggled, making only 27 percent of those efforts. Mack is right that the zone isn’t perfect, but it’s become an incredibly useful weapon for his team. Georgetown coach John Thompson III noted that it forced his players to make reads and plays rather than rely on the playbook, something that appeared to be difficult for the young Hoya squad that barely managed to scored over one point per possession. It may not make an appearance on every single possession, but the Musketeers 1-3-1 zone is an X-factor that could change games this March.