Who knows how it all ends for Richard Pitino’s Xavier team in year one, but Herb Sendek’s Santa Clara team forced him and his team to realize how hard this thing is going to be.
As Pitino stepped to the podium after a game in which his team entered as 3.5-point favorites, he declared that there was “not a lot of good, obviously” to be gleaned from the night, that he was disappointed in himself and that his Xavier fanbase deserved an apology from him.
Perhaps Pitino’s remarks could be considered dramatic by some, but the final count indicated that they likely weren’t. Santa Clara had just finished an 87-68 floor waxing of Pitino’s team in which it shot 54.7% from the field, held Xavier to 33.9% shooting from the field—as well as 27.8% shooting from 3-point range—out-rebounded Xavier 42-30 and led by as much as 30.
The narrative coming out of that Monday night walloping often came in regard to Pitino and the road ahead for his team—which appears to be bleak in some ways—but the first-year Xavier head coach was sure to avoid overlooking the obvious storyline that didn’t involve his program.
"We knew Santa Clara was going to be a good team," Pitino said. "I've obviously got a lot of respect for coach Sendek, for the program, the consistency he's built in that program."
Sendek’s team was entirely unfazed by Xavier’s Cintas Center, its environment, the roster Pitino had put together and the cross-country travel–which included a few stops–that surrounded the trip out east. Sendek’s team had enough confidence as it traveled out east to be made an example of in the case of why power-five teams should opt to schedule buy game opponents that have KenPom rankings above 300 rather than teams like his.
The Santa Clara coach says “affirmative” in regard to the idea that his team went into Cincinnati believing that it could get back on the plane with a win. This group has done this before, why couldn’t it do it again?
Since senior guard Brenton Knapper’s arrival on Santa Clara’s campus in 2022, the program has knocked off TCU, Stanford, Oregon and Depaul. It’s also come within 10 points of beating UCF, Arizona State and Washington. This program’s talent level and infrastructure appears to be far closer to a power-five than it is a traditional buy game opponent. It’s still not taking anything that it can do on stages like Monday’s for granted, though.
“It’s a pretty big deal anytime we can play a school like Xavier and get a win out of that,” Knapper told Basket Under Review. “I feel like it’s huge.”
Sendek says the win “stands out” because of the “storied tradition of the Xavier program” and the long-standing success of each coach that’s been there over the years–all of which he says he’s known–as well as the “championship pedigree” that Pitino brings. The 10th-year Santa Clara head coach has been at this far too long to believe that it’s a program-altering win, though.
After 992 career games as a Division-I head coach–with time at NC State, Arizona State and Miami Ohio accounted for in addition to his time at Santa Clara–Sendek is comfortable being the wet blanket as a result of his gamet of experiences.
“I’d have to add to this commentary that at the end of the day it’s very early in the season,” Sendek told Basket Under Review, “And it’s simply one game. Winning that game certainly doesn’t make our season. If we lost, it would not have devastated our season.”
When now-Oklahoma City Thunder forward Jalen Williams and Golden State Warriors guard Brandin Podziemski sat in the locker room at the Leavey Center, they heard a similar sentiment to the one Sendek affirmed after his team’s win over Xavier numerous times.
The two NBA rotation players were developed by Sendek and often benefitted from his even-keeled, level-headed messaging through good and bad. Sendek knew the upside when he recruited Williams as a high schooler and Podziemski as a transfer portal player after he played sparingly at Illinois, but he likely didn’t believe the level that each of their respective careers would reach in a quick timespan.
Sendek’s demeanor doesn’t appear to allow him to stray from his messaging or get too high off of his program, but the way to crack him doesn’t appear to be all that difficult to decipher. All anyone has to do to accomplish that is bring up his program’s representation in the NBA.
“It’s certainly now a well known fact in the basketball community that the guys recently have come to Santa Clara developed and gone on and are doing really well in the NBA,” Sendek said. “That's a great positive Jalen and Brandin both continue to be phenomenal ambassadors for our program and university.”
When Williams won an NBA championship with the Oklahoma City Thunder this summer, Sendek was alongside him in a No. 8 Thunder jersey holding the Larry O’Brien Trophy. Perhaps Williams’ gesture to include the veteran head coach seemed to be more of a courtesy than anything, but the moment as well as Williams’ presence within the program appears to be a recruiting tool of sorts as well as a dignifying sign for Sendek’s program.
At the very least, it gives the players within his former program reason to believe.
“I feel like it shows that you don't have to go to a high major just to get to where you wanna go,” Knapper said. “We’ve got a lot of good guys this year that came in and so I feel like we have those guys be able to get drafted into the NBA and everything. It for sure put more eyes on us and got some throughout the years with those guys coming in.”
Who knows if this Santa Clara team will have a player with underdog-esque rise similar to the ones that Williams and Podziemski embarked on a few seasons ago, but the program’s track record is enough in itself to dignify it.
Sendek’s program has won 20 games in each of the last four seasons and have accomplished the feat in five of the last six. It’s become a WCC model of consistency whether they have NBA players on the roster or not.
If the 10th-year head coach has a secret ingredient, he’s not showing his hand at this point.
“I don't know that it could be oversimplified and it could be said that ‘this is the one silver bullet,’” Sendek said. “I think we want what everybody wants. We all want high character people, you want talented players who understand the value of being part of the team, like everybody we're looking for toughness and skill and basketball IQ and all those kinds of ingredients.”
Just about everything Sendek has wanted to build at this place following his Arizona State tenure has come to fruition, but he’s still without a banner at the top of the Leavey Center.
Sendek has still yet to lead this program to an NCAA Tournament bid despite building a program that’s consistently found its way toward the top of the WCC standings each season. Santa Clara has been to the NIT three times—all in the last four seasons—in the last four seasons under Sendek’s watch, but has yet to break through.
The Santa Clara coach hasn’t pressed in an effort to get back to the dance for the first time since he made it at Arizona State in 2014.
“I hope we have a good practice today and that’s how we go about it,” Sendek said. “It doesn’t serve any productive purpose to get out over your skis.”
Instead, this program has opted to push forward with its principles in mind rather than any aspiration that it wants to fulfill down the line. “Every practice” includes the Santa Clara staff pushing their players to move forward in their togetherness, they believe that will propel them to results.
This group knows the going will become difficult down the line as it looks to go dancing for the first time under Sendek and has to go through Gonzaga and Saint Mary’s to do it, but it’s not changing what’s gotten it here.
“Just stick together,” Knapper said of what’s gotten this group here. “Throughout everything we’ve just trusted each other, trusted the coaching staff and whatever plan we have, we just go with it.”
