Huge free-throw differential keys Xavier win

BY JOE GERGEN | joe.gergen@newsday.com

10:18 PM EDT, March 20, 2008

WASHINGTON - No one had to tell Xavier about the fragility of an 11-point lead. Those who returned from the NCAA Tournament second-round game against Ohio State last year still carry the psychological scars. So when Georgia twice pushed its margin over the Musketeers to 11 early in the second half of their first-round contest at the Verizon Center Thursday, there was no panic.

"I thought our tournament experience helped us," coach Sean Miller said after Xavier rallied to oust the Bulldogs, 73-61. So did a heightened defensive effort and an extraordinary free-throw differential.

Xavier led top-seeded Ohio State 55-44 in the second round last year and appeared en route to a huge upset. The Musketeers still were up nine with less than three minutes to play and might have run out the clock if Ohio State's Greg Oden had been called for an apparent intentional foul late in the contest. As it was, the Buckeyes earned a tie on a three-pointer with seconds remaining, won 78-71 in overtime and advanced all the way to the championship game.

This time, trailing an upstart Georgia team 41-30 and 43-32, Xavier finally kicked into gear with runs of 10-3 and 12-0 interrupted only by the second of Billy Humphrey's two three-point shots.

The Musketeers were aided by four foul calls, which they converted into eight points, in the initial rally and consecutive treys by B.J. Raymond and Dante Jackson in the second burst. The three in transition by Jackson, a freshman attempting his only shot in eight minutes, staked Xavier to its first lead since the opening minutes at 52-49 with 7:21 left. "The biggest play in the game," Miller called it. "It seized the moment for us."

Josh Duncan, a 6-9 senior, led both teams with 20 points. Remarkably, Xavier's foremost inside presence played 27 minutes without committing a foul. The other forward, 6-8 sophomore Derrick Brown, had 19 points, 11 rebounds and one foul. Their counterparts, 6-10 Dave Bliss and 6-8 Albert Jackson of Georgia, were charged with eight personals. The Musketeers scored 25 of their 47 second-half points on free throws and had an overall margin of 27-3.

"I thought the big difference in the game is ... we attacked a lot more in the second half," Miller said. "When you look at the free-throw differential, that's more our style of play. Generally, we take more free throws than our opponents attempt, and I thought we put ourselves in a position to foul us and we finished off by making a great percentage."

Georgia, which grabbed the final berth in the Tournament by winning four consecutive games in the SEC Tournament, had six more field goals than Xavier and out-rebounded the Musketeers 31-29. "We did a lot of things well," Bulldogs coach Dennis Felton said, "but I thought the game got separated by our inability to get to the line as much as Xavier."

Terrance Woodbury led Georgia with 16 points, including three of the team's six treys. Sundiata Gaines, the senior point guard from Jamaica, had 13 points, six assists and four rebounds in his final game for the Bulldogs. He had difficulty penetrating the Xavier defense in the second half, when he was knocked to the floor on several occasions.

"He kept attacking the paint, attacking the rim," Felton said. "I don't know if Sundiata has ever had a game where he didn't get to the free-throw line. But it certainly wasn't because he was not playing aggressively and not attacking the game like he normally does."

Gaines said he will treasure the Bulldogs' surprising run through the SEC Tournament even if they couldn't carry the momentum through 40 minutes here. "The only thing I would say that's disappointing is having the lead and let it slip away so easily," he said. Thus did the marathon men from Georgia finally run out of time.