FanHouse Drew Lavender

Bob Huggins is long gone and Chris Henry's been released, yet Cincinnati athletes can't seem to steer their way clear of the police blotter. Drew Lavender, whose career as the point guard for the Xavier Musketeers ended in the regional finals, was arrested in early on Sunday morning and charged with disorderly conduct while intoxicated and possession of marijuana.

Police say Lavender was drunk and disorderly after they asked him several times to move out of a Cincinnati street intersection "and refused until apprehension," police documents note.

Lavender's college career began at Oklahoma as a McDonald's All-American and he played well there for two years before transferring to Xavier. While with the Musketeers he starred on the court but never quite shook a reputation for hard living off of it. He was arrested while at Oklahoma and charged with recklessly causing annoyance at a nightclub over the summer.

If there's a silver lining for Xavier it's that arrested players have, for better or worse, long been a hallmark of some of the country's biggest programs. They've chafed at the mid-major label for some time and can now point to the kind of behavior that's gotten programs from the SEC to Big East in trouble as a reason why they're big-time.

Xavier needed something special on Monday night. Drew Lavender was less than 100% with a sprained ankle and Rhode Island was playing at home and looking to raise some doubt about the fitness of the 10th ranked team in the country. The Musketeers, as they have all season, got that something special and held off the Rams 81-77. The something special? Josh Duncan.

Few teams are deep enough to bring a player of Duncan's abilities off the bench, which is probably why the A-10 regular season title is a fait accompli for Xavier. Duncan played 23 minutes and scored 23 points on perfect shooting. Duncan was 8-of-8 from the floor, giving him 16 straight over the last two games, hit three threes and made all four of his free throws in a virtuoso performance. When Rhode Island's second-half run gave them a lead with seven and a half minutes left, Duncan hit a three to regain the lead for good and hit another minutes later to ice the game.

Duncan was the hero last night but Xavier is so balanced that it could have and has been any of six players. That's why they've run away with the A-10 and why the sky's the limit for their chances in March. The only questions left for the Musketeers is where they'll be seeded (no lower than three, in my mind) and if Sean Miller might be tempted by an opening at Indiana.

There are but a handful of games left to play in the Atlantic-10 season and there's only two things we know for sure. One, more than one team will be dancing come March and, two, Xavier and Rhode Island will be two of them. The Musketeers won their seventh straight last night even though Stanley Burrell and Drew Lavender struggled in Charlotte. Josh Duncan nailed a three with 16 seconds to play and they outlasted the 49ers 62-60.

Winning in all conditions is what makes the Musketeers head and shoulders above the rest of the league. Even the Rams, a lock to my eyes, can't win on the road with consistency. At least they got to overtime before losing to Temple last night. Dayton, unable to compete after Chris Wright's injury, can't even defend their home court anymore.

They dropped a 63-61 decision against Duquesne, which now leads them by two games. It's hard to make a compelling case for why the Flyers should make the tournament and leave the Dukes at home. When you win your games should and does matter in the final reckoning. Yes, Dayton beat Louisville and Pittsburgh but they are 4-6 in league play. Duquesne, on the other hand, is peaking at the right time, even if their best early win was against Niagara.

Another team winning at the right time is Temple.

It's been a topsy-turvy week in the Atlantic 10 but one team coming out of it smelling like roses is UMass. The Minutemen followed up a win in Dayton with an 86-79 home win over Charlotte to leave themselves in a tie atop the conference. The only other team, save the Temple-Saint Louis winner today, to win both A-10 games this week is Fordham and the Rams didn't take home the pelts that the Minutemen did.

UMass won both games because no one can keep up with their guards. On Wednesday, Dayton sent the Minutemen to the line 36 times and yesterday they made 44 trips against the Niners. If they were a halfway decent foul shooting team, they'd be blowing out every team they played. Instead they hit 29-of-44 and keep games closer than they have any right being. The 49ers shot just 36% for the game but it wasn't settled until the final minutes.

Even though Charlotte plays just as fast as the Minutemen, they were no match in the quickness department. Chris Lowe's drives would find Ricky Harris for threes or Dante Milligan inside and each crippled the 49ers hopes of remaining unbeaten in league play. Harris knocked down four deep balls and Milligan went to the line 14 times to provide big chunks of the offense.

There's no question that the Xavier Musketeers are one of the best teams in college basketball this season. They do everything well on the court, have beaten teams from all over the country and should continue making noise well into March. Rivals.com noticed that this week and, in particular, they noticed how well Drew Lavender played during a three-win week and named him their "Mid-Major Player of the Week." The Web site called the school to pass along the good news but got a colder response than they anticipated.

Xavier athletic director Mike Bobinski told the Web site thanks, but no thanks.

"It's such as easy thing to do to put labels on people," Bobinski said. "But you do an injustice when you don't know or tell the whole story by lumping people into broad major or mid-major categories."

So is Bobinski right? Nope, he's not and his response plays right into all the worst conceptions of the term. It has nothing to do with talent level. According to the Office of Postsecondary Education (via Basketball State), XU spends $11 million on their athletic program, which sounds like a fair chunk of change until you realize that 183 schools spend more than them. Among those schools are Stony Brook, Lehigh, Northern Iowa, Sacred Heart and Liberty.

There's been no doubt about which mid major conference has been the biggest surprise to this point of the season. The Atlantic 10 has played the eighth toughest non-conference slate in the country and has a sparkling 113-65 record to show for their efforts. They've beaten teams from just about every one of the power conferences, they've won on the road and at neutral sites and reclaimed the standard that they ceded to the Missouri Valley conference in recent years.

You have to go back to 2004 to find a year when the league landed more than two teams in the big dance and, entering this season, it didn't seem like things would be all that different. Everyone knew Xavier is a consistently strong program but it was hard to find too many bullish projections about a second team that should be making March plans. What a difference two months make.

As of right now, it's almost impossible to see the league landing fewer than four teams in the tournament. Seven teams are in the top 67 of the RPI, three teams in the Top 25 and they've compiled so many quality wins that, barring a complete collapse by two of the front-runners, anything less would be criminal.

Let's break it down:

Xavier finished up one of the best weeks in the school's history by routing Auburn 80-57 in Alabama on Sunday. That made them 3-0 for the week with all three wins coming via blowout and coming against Big Six competition. What better way to round into form for Atlantic 10 play? The wins should restore the Musketeers to the Top 25 and should erase any doubts raised by losses to Arizona State and Tennessee.

The Auburn win actually represented a bit of a come-down after the Kansas State and Virginia thumpings. They didn't reach 100 points and only had five players score in double figures instead of the seven they had in each of those games. Those cosmetic differences can't diminish how well Xavier's playing right now. They were 16-of-26 from three for the second straight game, adding another dimension to an already dangerous offense, and recorded assists on all 15 of their field goals in the first half.

Drew Lavender had a lot to do with each of those highlights. He hit five threes and picked up five assists. The latter isn't an overwhelming number but is indicative of how good the 5'7" sprite is at running an offense which operates at an insanely high level. They are the most efficient team in the nation and Lavender is the biggest reason. We'll have a full A-10 preview before conference play kicks off Wednesday but here's a preview - Xavier will be at the top.

The rest of the winners and losers:

My fellow FanHouser Charles Rich dropped me a line during tonight's Xavier-Virginia game to say that it looks like it's the ACC's turn to get turned through the A-10 thresher. Seldom wrong and right again. The conference had been especially unkind to the Big East this season and spent time beating up on clubs from all over the country, but the ACC had been unscathed. Not anymore.

Richmond took out Virginia Tech earlier this evening and the Musketeers just finished an evisceration of the Cavaliers as complete as any you could hope to see. 108-70 was the final score but XU was pushing toward a 50-point lead early in the second half before pulling back on the reins a bit. That adds another conference to their hit list and, after losing to Tennessee, they'll get another shot at the SEC when they play at Auburn this weekend.

It's funny but in their first 10 wins, the one flaw, if you want to call it that, in Xavier's game was an erratic touch from beyond the arc. Sean Miller must have had them shooting 100 threes apiece in practice because they were 16-of-26 from deep tonight enabling their second straight 100 point game and blowout win of a big conference school.

With all the hubbub surrounding Rhode Island's ascension into the Top 25 and Dayton's evisceration of Pitt, Xavier fell out of the spotlight a little bit. They had a bit to do with it themselves. Losing at Arizona State and to Tennessee is nothing to be ashamed about but it did raise a few questions about the Musketeers fitness at the highest levels. Call off the dogs. Last night's 103-77 humiliation of Kansas State is a reminder that 2008 should be a very good year indeed for the Cincinnati school.

It will be a good year because of how deep a team coach Sean Miller has put together. Xavier had seven players score in double figures, the ninth time this year four or more have done so in the same game. Drew Lavender led the way with 21, Xavier scored the first 14 points of the game and the Musketeers shot a blistering 53.9%. They also went to the line 39 times and had just nine turnovers in a complete annihilation of K-State's defense.

As impressive as the offensive explosion was, the defense might have been better.

Xavier took their longest road trip of the season for today's game at Arizona State and, thus, will have plenty of time to ponder their 77-55 loss on the way home to Cincinnati. The Sun Devils were far from gracious hosts. Their zone defense swarmed the Musketeers all afternoon. Every shot Xavier took was a contested one -- they shot 30% overall and hit just 22% of their shots in the second half. Arizona State, on the other hand, shot the lights out in the second 20 minutes, outscoring the Musketeers 44-27.

ASU's performance was all the more impressive because, for what's believed to be the first time in school history, they started four freshmen. One of them, guard Ty Abbott, led them with 19 points and hit five three pointers. Jeff Harden, another freshman and the team's leading scorer this season, added 16 while crusty old sophomore Jerren Shipp had 17. That was all part of a 59.5% day of shooting for the now 7-2 Sun Devils.

Xavier's offensive misery affected all comers but none more so than B.J. Raymond. He led the team with 12 points but was 2-of-10 from three. Drew Lavender and Stanley Burrell didn't help matters by missing 16 of the 21 shots they attempted. Josh Duncan, injured in this week's win against Cincinnati, gave it the old college try but had to leave after five minutes. Sadly, he seemed to take most of Xavier's luck with him.