CINCINNATI — One of the trademarks of nationally-known men’s basketball program Xavier, as it has gained more and more standing the past several years, has been toughness.

The Musketeers have won a lot of games by simply being the stronger team — mentally and physically — in the late stages. That is why Murray State fans have to be very excited with what they saw Saturday in their team’s first game — though it was an exhibition — under new Head Coach Ryan Miller.

Murray State out-toughed X, something that is very hard to do, especially on the Muskies’ home court, the Cintas Center. In one of the true snakepits of college basketball, it was the Racers — bending but not breaking after holding a double-digit lead — being strong enough to take a 75-70 win.

“The best part about today is we competed, but not only did we compete, we still have a lot of room to get better,” Miller said in a postgame interview on Froggy 103.7. “Give credit to our guys. We faced some stuff today where we weren’t even prepared to practice for it yet.”

The radio coverage and playing X in front of big crowds at a venue like Cintas were not things NCAA Division 1 teams had been doing in mid-October until the past two-or-so years. These types of games, in fact, were relegated to what were known as “secret games” with no fans allowed and no details from the games allowed to be reported. 

Saturday, the Racers and Muskies were in front of a very hearty crowd and the atmosphere was very real, and it became more real for the Racers after the 54-43 lead they had built with 11:20 remaining in the game steadily disappeared until forward T.J. Carroll’s score off a bad shot tied the game, 64-64, with 1:30 remaining.

Murray State reserve guard Mattias Corbon’s 1-for-2 trip at the foul line regained a one-point lead, then his two charity tosses extended the lead to 67-64 with 46.7 seconds to go. He ended with a double-double of 11 points and 11 rebounds.

That is where point guard K.J. Tenner (12 points, five rebounds) took control, going to foul line and burying six straight shots to make the score 73-70 with 3.7 seconds left. Guard Layne Taylor then sealed the win by stealing a long desperation inbound pass and hitting two more free throws for the final score.

That completed a rock-solid 13-for-14 performance for the Racers at the foul line in the final three minutes. They were only 9-for-17 up to that point. 

“I kind of get mad at the guys,” Miller said, tongue firmly in cheek. “Yeah, at the end of practices, I try to challenge them with end-of-game free throws, where if they miss them, they do eight or ten wind sprints, to get them into condition. They don’t miss them.

“So, I see them get tired, at times, today and I’m like, ‘Well, if we’d miss some of those, we wouldn’t be tired.’”

Reserve forward Fred King led the Racers with 15 points and was matched by starting guard Brayden Shorter (5-for-14 from 3-point range), while reserve forward Roman Domon had 10 points, seven boards and matched Corbon for team-high honors with four assists.

Carroll led all scorers with 21 points, while X teammates Filip Borovicanin, Roddie Anderson III and Malik Messina-Moore all had 12.

Neither team shot the ball with much accuracy with Murray State, both ending at about 36%. The Racers were more successful from long range, going 7-for-30 (23.3%), compared to X’s paltry 2-for-15 (13.3%).