Powell missed two games with a concussion that he suffered against Rutgers on December 14. He returned to score 27 in a win over DePaul and 15 points in a win over Georgetown since returning to the court. He is second behind Marcus Howard of Marquette for the Big East scoring lead.
In wining its fifth straight game, the Pirates is 3-0 in the Conference for the fourth time.(2017-18, 1998-99, 1992-93). Seton Hall played in the NCAA Tournament in two of the previous three season that got off to a fast start.
"I'm 100 percent now," Powell said.. "The school and the coaches did a good job of getting me ready to play by not rushing things The guys did a good job of finding me. We ran some plays to get me open."
His coach Kevin Willard believes there is even more in Powell's game that will dazzle the conference.
"I think Myles is about 80 percent right now. As he gets back in shape and over the concussion, you're going to see a guy that will elevate his game even more," Willard said.
"Road wins in this league are huge. As even as we all our they are hard to come by," Willard said.
Powell and his teammates are up for the challenge.
"People forget, we're battle tested. At the beginning of the year we lost some close ones, some big ones," Powell said. "We went back and coach did a good job of making us realize, how not to be in that situation again. When they cut it down to four or six, we did a great job of getting under control. We got an alley oop to Rho (Jared Rhoden) and came down and got a big stop. Every body is getting older and knowing their role and what they have to do."
Xavier coach Travis Steele is aware of it and will implore his team to play with more urgency.
It's huge. It's everything. You want to give yourself a chance to win this league, you've got to protect home court," Steele said. "We weren't able to do that tonight, unfortunately. We've got to protect the Cintas Center, man. That's big for us going forward.
As painful as it was to get his bell rung at Rutgers, Powell thinks it turned into a positive.
"It may sound crazy but that concussion could have been the best thing that happened to us. Everybody put their big boy pants on and picked up their game," Powell said.
Four of Powell's mates ended up in double figures.
Jared Rhoden scored 16. Quincy McKnight added 15 and Romano Gill had 11.
Xavier played from behind after the first five minutes of the game, and trailed 40-32 at the half.
Tyrique Jones, who is averaging a double-double on the year scored 19 points to lead Xavier. Paul Scruggs had 17. Leading scorer joined the 1,000-point club with 15 points and has 1,003 points for his career. Jason Carter hobbled by an ankle sprain suffered in shoot-around before the game scored 14 points, two off his season high.
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