Apparently Xavier Has Gangsters On Their Team

The annual crosstown shootout between Cincinnati and Xavier took things to a new level today when the two teams decided to slug it out at the end of the game. The two schools are only a few miles apart leaving the game to decide yearly bragging rights. Last year Cincy won by 20 points on their home court and this year Xavier got their revenge winning 76-53.

These games are always intense, with their hard fouls, trash talking and general hatred for the other school. The trash talking got so out of hand that Xavier junior guard Mark Lyons was warned by officials in his locker room at halftime to cut it out or get hit with a technical. Lyons shut up in the second half.

I'm all for running up the score in games, especially in rivalry games but Tu Holloway a senior guard for Xavier has a lot of blame for what happened. After his layup he made with time running out he ran back on defense yelling at everyone and anyone on Cincy's bench before getting in the face of Cincy's Ge'Lawn Guyn. That's when freshman Dezmine Wells came over to help Halloway and then shoved Guyn. Here's what happened next:

Bearcats senior Yancy Gates is the player who sucker punches Xavier's Kenny Frease in that video. A Bearcat player appears to stomp on Frease while he is bloodied and on the ground and more punches are thrown while coaches tried to separate the teams. Not shown after the game was called with 9.3 seconds remaining was Holloway jumping on the scorer's table celebrating the victory.

Then in the post-game interview Holloway dropped this bomb on everyone, "That’s what you’re going to see from Xavier and Cincinnati,” Holloway said. “We got disrespected a little bit before the game, guys calling us out. We’re a tougher team. We’re grown men over here. We’ve got a whole bunch of gangsters in the locker room—not thugs, but tough guys on the court. And we went out there and zipped them up at the end of the game.”

The sad thing is neither Halloway nor Lyons apologized for their actions rather they seemed to be proud of themselves for "not letting people get in their faces". We'll see how proud they are when the NCAA and the teams' respective conferences and ADs figure this mess out and hand out their suspensions.

Good news is at least the coaches understood how incredibly dumb this was. Cincy coach Mick Cronin made his players turn in their jerseys afterwards, he even had to take them off some players. "I made everybody take their jersey off and they will not put it on again until they have a full understanding of where they go to school, what the university stands for and how lucky they are to even be here let alone have a scholarship." Cronin also said he'd be meeting with his AD and school President hoping they wouldn't ask him to resign after this.

Xavier coach Chris Mack tweeted this after the game, "No one, no one regrets our ending to the UC game more than me. My 5 and 6 yr olds were in the stands. Both teams were at fault period. I'm disappointed to the enth degree. I've got good kids. Mick's got good kids. They made DUMB decisions."

Sad thing is Xavier was a legit Final Four contender but after today's game who knows what they'll be or who will still be on the team.