No team starts out the season hoping to play in the NIT, but it can tell you a lot about a team to see how they handle ending up in the secondary March basketball tournament. In their run that tonight saw them advance to the NIT final Xavier has displayed the tenacity, verve, and talent that had people dreaming about the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament early in the season.
Xavier opened their third trip to Madison Square Garden by looking a lot more like the team that took down Ohio State and Connecticut than the one that stumbled to defeat here against Butler just under 3 weeks ago.