Xavier can’t root for Georgia now

WASHINGTON – Everybody appreciates an underDawg, including Stanley Burrell and his Xavier teammates.

So Burrell and the rest of the Musketeers, members of the not-enough-respect Atlantic 10 Conference, gathered at coach Sean Miller’s home last weekend to watch the SEC tournament final, rooting for Georgia to complete its out-of-nowhere surge to that title.

“We were going on, like, ‘Come on! Come on! Y’all can do it!’ ” Burrell said Wednesday. “They’re America’s team right now. Everybody loves them for everything they’ve gone through.”

After Georgia managed to beat Arkansas to claim an improbable conference championship and NCAA tournament berth, Xavier stayed tuned to Miller’s TV to see the bracket announcement. And, lo and behold, how did that turn out?

“It’s crazy. We’re sitting there, ‘Come on Georgia, hang in there,’ and all of a sudden it’s, ‘Xavier matches up against Georgia,’ ” Burrell said. “Oh, man. You serious?”

That’s when Xavier’s love for Georgia ended, of course. The No. 3-seeded Musketeers (27-6) face the No. 14 Bulldogs (17-16) today in the first round of the West Regional.

“They stayed together and built up a lot of chemistry,” said Burrell, one of six players averaging double-figures in points for a team making its seventh NCAA appearance in the past eight years. “They deserve to be here with the run they made. And now we’re looking forward to ending that run.”

There was little sign that Georgia was capable of doing what it did to make it to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2002.

After all, the team won a total of four SEC games throughout the entire regular season, and entered the conference tournament three games worse than .500 overall. There was talk that coach Dennis Felton was on the way out, talk of which he and his players were all too aware.

“All coaches know – and I’m no different – that your employers have the right to fire you whenever they want. So we live with that all the time,” Felton said after a practice at the Verizon Center.

Said senior guard Sundiata Gaines, who leads Georgia in scoring, rebounding and assists: “He started receiving a lot of heat from the media and the press; some within the Georgia program. … Winning the SEC championship made it good for him, as far as his job security. He was relieved.”

“We’ve always continued to identify what we had left to fight for,” Felton said. “So we talked about our record, and how much we had to win down the stretch to be above .500 to make it to the postseason in the NIT.”

Now look where they are.