A winter break can be a good thing. Winter, objectively, sucks horribly and the more of it that can be skipped, the better. This is less the case with a long break in basketball. There is no real positive that can come from a basketball team not playing basketball. In that there is no shape like game shape, there is equally no shape like 19 days on the shelf shape.
Pre break Xavier had been having a season that had swung wildly between encouraging and depressing. A demoralizing stretch of four games in which the Musketeers made heavy weather of beating EKU was erased by a blistering stretch in which UC, Oklahoma, and Marquette were swept aside.