Xavier quit in the first half. And I don't mean letting up a little when the game gets out of hand, which is the right thing to do. I mean blatantly not caring from the opening tip.
I like wins as much as anyone, but as a fan of college basketball, tonight's game was a travesty. Xavier could not have shown less interest in this game if they had played in jeans. I have seen a lot of blowouts across college basketball this year, but this was the first time I was in the building for one. You could see the indifference in the body language of the Xavier players during dead balls and timeouts. How many times did Karaban just walk to the rim without anyone challenging him? I have seen more defensive effort in middle-aged pickup games than Xavier showed tonight.
When the players are getting paid, they should play harder, not shuffle around the court for 40 minutes like Xavier did tonight. This game was a total embarrassment for the sport, and there have been a lot of games like it this season. I don't know what is happening in college hoops (or football, where this also happened a lot), but someone in charge better get to work fixing it or the fans will stop caring too, and that will be the end of the party for everyone.