Xavier Basketball: Breaking down Musketeers 2024-25 non-conference schedule
Regular Season Games
The non-conference slate does include a tournament and the Big East-Big 12 battle, but the Musketeers will still have to take care of business against the others in the early season. Fortunately, they'll welcome their first five opponents to the Cintas Center, and the schedule is awfully soft throughout much of the first month.
November 4 vs. Texas Southern
A brutal non-conference contributed to Johnny Jones and Texas Southern finishing below .500 overall last season, although they did recover to go 12-6 in the SWAC and play for the conference championship game. They do lose several key pieces from an offense that took awhile to get going, but Jones and staff worked in the portal and will be ready for an upset on the road.
November 8 vs. IU Indianapolis
There will be a lot new for IU Indianapolis as they begin the 2024-25 basketball season. They not only don a new name, with the change to IU Indianapolis from IUPUI, but also a new head coach in Paul Corsaro, who will look to bring the Jaguars to relevancy after the program managed to scrape together just 14 victories total in three years of Matt Crenshaw. Traveling to Cincinnati the first weekend of the college basketball season won't be an easy one for the first-year head man.
November 12 vs. Jackson State
The second SWAC team to travel north to take on Xavier, Jackson State is fresh off a 15-17 campaign under now third-year head coach Mo Williams. There was progress for the team last season, but to have any hopes of putting a fright into the Musketeers, they'll have to improve on the defensive end, after surrendering nearly 76 points per contest in 2023-24.
December 1 vs. South Carolina State
After going to Fort Myers to participate in the Fort Myers Tip-Off Event, South Carolina State will be a nice way to return home for Xavier and begin their final stretch of non-conference action. SC State went 14-17 in 2023-24, and the Musketeers should be comfortable favorites here.
December 10 vs. Morgan State
Another early season tune-up for the Musketeers, as they welcome a Morgan State team that lost 20 games a season ago. It's Year Six for Morgan State coach Kevin Broadus, a former John Thompson III assistant at Georgetown who hasn't quite been able to turn around the Bears in much the same way he did at Binghamton, when they went to the NCAA Tournament under him in 2009.