While Xavier may not lack faith, they lacked three of their top players when confronting Oral Roberts University at the Cintas Center Sunday.
Coach Chris Mack took the microphone to mid court and apologized for the ugly events that occurred at the end of last Saturday's win over the University of Cincinnati. After the game he apologized for not having those players, who were left to play, prepared.
"I didn't do a good enough job preparing my team and putting them in the best positions to be successful," Mack told the media in the post-game press conference.
Kenny Frease, sporting a black eye from the incident was also apologetic, "My team expected me to step up and I didn't do that."
Those who should apologize the most were in street clothes. Mark Lyons, Tu Holloway and Dez Wells were suspended by the University for their roles in the brawl against Cincinnati.
Oral Roberts has been successful against team ranked like Xavier, who was ranked eighth in the country coming into the contest. They have defeated a ranked team or at least one from a "power" conference in each of the last eight seasons.
Warren Niles, who learned his basketball in Forest Park and Winton Woods High School in Cincinnati, put the Golden Eagles in position to pull the upset with his 15-point scoring effort. He also contributed seven rebounds and helped the double team that haunted Frease all game.
Dominique Morrison, who admitted struggling with his shot all season, connected on five or eight 3-point shots to lead all scorers with 19.
Frease was the leading scorer among those available to play. He just four points. He turned the ball over four times.
"The missing players made it a little more difficult to prepare," ORU coach Scott Sutton said. "A lot of these kids the were able to play, played very limited minutes. We didn't have a great scouting report. We figured that they would pound the ball to Frease and I thought we did an excellent job of double teaming Frease. We caused some turnovers and kept the ball out of his hands. We got a lot of steals, a lot of easy opportunities in the first half. That really got us going."
Oral Roberts would have been happy to play Xavier at full strength but concentrated on taking care of their jobs.
I think it was our best game," Morrison said. "We stepped it up and made a lot of shots. We've been missing a lot of shots and put in a lot of work. It paid off today."
"Full strength it might have been a different game but they weren't here to play so we don't know. We can't control what happened last week. We could only control what happened on the court today. We went out and played as hard as we could."
The thrill of beating the number eight team in the country was not spoiled for the Oral Roberts players or the coach.
"It was a great day for our program," Sutton said. "We don't get this opportunity very often. One to play a top 10 team and number two to play them without three of their best players. It was unfortunate what happened last Saturday but I don't want to take anything away from our kids. It was a great team win. It was a mindset and they came out and played a completer 40 minutes. It was the best game we've played all year. I'm awfully proud of what they were able to do today."
Niles was happy to play in front of his family and friends.
"It was great coming home to play in front of my family and to get the win," Niles said.. "It was the first time all season I got to play in front of my family and get the win against the number eight team."
"They were the number eight team in the country. The suspensions didn't take away from our team at all. We prepared to play the number eight team in the country. We weren't looking at the suspensions or any of that. If I had my choice, me, I'd would like to have them out there to play against. But for our team to get the win, I didn't really care if they were playing or not."
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