Update, 9:12 p.m…An unbelievable effort by the Colonials but Xavier showed in the final few minutes that it really is the better team. Some sloppy passes and turnovers gave the Musketeers too much momentum. But a ton of bright spots for this GW team. Lee finishes with 14. Diggs with 19. And the team kept it close the entire second half. The final score, 66-56 is inflated. GW did not play 10 points worse than Xavier.

Dayton defeated Fordham, 57-50, which once again pushes GW outside the cut for the tournament. The Colonials are 5-9 in conference, along with Fordham, but the Rams own the tiebreaker. GW’s final two games, at Charlotte and at home against UMass, are about as critical as two final games can get.

Please see gwhatchet.com later this evening for a recap and Monday’s paper for full coverage of tonight’s game.

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Update, 8:39 p.m….Things starting to get tense here, as there have been a lot of calls, some of them questionable. Lee just converted a nice layup and now has 14 points, doubling his career high. Score: Xavier 47, GW 45. With the way both teams are playing, this game could come down to the final seconds.

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Update, 8:16 p.m….Diggs got the second half rolling with an emphatic dunk. GW is still very much in this game, only down by 2, 38-36, four minutes into the half. The Colonials have been sloppy on the last couple of plays, but Xavier hasn’t hit its shots on the way back, either.

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Update, 7:52 p.m….GW put together a nice run in the final seven minutes of the half, pulling to within six at one point and now down 36-28 at the half. The Colonials, though behind, have to be given some credit for not folding early and for keeping form when things didn’t go so well for the start. Junior Wynton Witherspoon knocked in a layup as the buzzer went off for the final basket of the half. Maybe that will give GW some momentum to open the second half.

One thing the Colonials have to be careful about are fouls. The Colonials picked up 10 in the first half, including an intentional that gave the Musketeers two free throws plus the ball. Junior Noel Wilmore has the most, with three.

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Update, 7:39 p.m….GW coach Karl Hobbs is currently exchanging some words with one of the referees after a different ref called junior Rob Diggs for traveling. Diggs got tangled on the ground with a Xavier player and tried to pass the ball off to sophomore Johnny Lee but the ref decided Diggs didn’t get the ball off in time. During the timeout that immediately followed that play, Hobbs shook his head at the ref who called the travel and mouthed the words “that’s not fair” a couple times. Score: 29-17, Xavier.

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Update, 7:12 p.m….GW strugging from the start as it trails 17-4 in the first seven minutes. Shots aren’t falling and they aren’t doing a very good job boxing out. This could be a long night if the Colonials don’t get into a better rhythm.

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Update, 7:02 p.m….The Colonials are being introduced right now and the students are indeed reading the newspaper. It’s a neat idea, except that the student section isn’t prominent enough for the point to really be obvious. No one booed to taunted the GW players and they didn’t even seem to notice the students’ behavior.

Lights are off for Xavier’s introductions. This time the student section is playing a bigger role, waving blue glow sticks in the air. A lot of other fans seated behind the other basket, the basket opposite the student section, are holding up giant floppy noodles. The arena looks almost entirely full.

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Update, 6:11 p.m….GW just walked onto the court and is now shooting around. The Colonials are wearing the buff uniforms again, as they have for all three of their last games, all wins.

Also, a member of the Cintas Center staff told me about a couple of the traditions that those in attendance will perform before and during the game. Single pages from newspapers (no specific newspaper was singled out for this) have been slipped over the back of the chairs in the student section. The students will pretend to read the page during GW’s lineup announcement as if to say, “we don’t care who you are, this bores us.” The students will then rip the pages into tiny pieces and toss it like confetti after the Musketeers hit their first basket.

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I’m here at Cintas Center in Cincinnati, where the Colonials (9-14, 12-1 Atlantic 10) will face the No. 9/11 Musketeers (24-4, 12-1 A-10). GW is on its first three-game winning streak of the season but that doesn’t measure up to Xavier’s winning streak, which is at 10 games.

The last time the two teams played, Jan. 19 at Smith Center, the Musketeers won, 74-66, but it was close until the final seconds. The Colonials even had a shot at winning before sophomore Damian Hollis accidentally stepped out of bounds late in the game and basically killed GW’s momentum.

The Cintas Center is an extremely difficult place to play and tonight won’t be any different for GW. The two teams have developed a rivalry as the conference’s top two programs over the past few years, so there’s certainly going to be some hostility. You can see a picture of the 10,250-seat arena at the bottom of this post.

Meanwhile, it’s less than an hour to game time and the Colonials have yet to step foot on the court to start warming up. They’ve gotten into the habit of arriving for warm-ups a bit later than one would expect. Xavier, however, has been on the court as a team shooting around and stretching for at least the past 20 minutes. They also seemed to be enjoying themselves out there, smiling, laughing and moving with the music that is playing while running through some drills and exercises. They look like a team ready to take care of business.

Some other interesting results around the A-10 today, most notably out in the midwest. St. Bonaventure, the league’s worst team, defeated Saint Louis on the road by 20 points. That’s right. Saint Louis definitely wins the award for the most inconsistent this season, scoring 20 points at GW in early January (who can forget that?) and losing to Bonaventure but also beating UMass and Rhode Island when both were still at the top of the conference. What a year for the Billikens.

The Bonnies, meanwhile, are mathematically eliminated from making the A-10 tournament but clearly didn’t pack it in. Xavier has clinched the top spot in the conference tournament, which begins March 12. Every team other than the two aforementioned are bunched within three games of each other in the standings, so who the other team sitting out this year’s tournament and all the seeds in between 2 and 12 are still to be decided. It’s going to be a crazy final week of basketball in the A-10.

As far as the Colonials are concerned, they are in a three-way tie with Fordham and Dayton at 5-8 in the A-10, second to the bottom. Fordham holds the tie-break over GW and GW over Dayton. The Flyers and the Rams play tonight. In front of these three teams are Duquesne and Charlotte, sitting at 6-7. They play tomorrow. Duquesne defeated the Colonials in late January; Charlotte and the GW will play for the first time this season March 6. So there are still a lot of things that can happen.