WACO, Texas -- For once, the beginning of basketball season brought with it a welcome change deep in the heart of Texas.While Baylors football program is stuck in a quagmire of scandal off the field and a five-game losing streak on the field, the Bears basketball team ascended from unranked to No. 9 in the Associated Press poll this week.Baylor already defeated then-fourth-ranked Oregon at home this went to the Battle 4 Atlantis to pull off an impressive string of victories over VCU, Michigan State and Louisville.All of that serves as context as No. 7 Xavier comes into the Ferrell Center on Saturday afternoon for a top-10 nonconference hoops matchup that will draw the eyes of the college basketball nation.Baylor (7-0) tips off at the same time as its football team kicks off on the road at West Virginia, but that coincidence wasnt even mentioned in Bears coach Scott Drews pregame press conference on Friday.Instead, Drew spoke about how fortunate his program is to have two top-10 nonconference opponents come into Baylors arena in the same season. Before this year, Baylor played only two top-10 nonconference opponents at home in its history.The chance of having two top-10 home games in nonconference, youve got a better chance of hitting the lottery, Drew said. Its a great opportunity for us to play at home against a real quality opponent. For both teams, your RPI is not going to go down if you lose and, if you win, its a great gain.Like Baylor, Xavier (7-0) is undefeated against a slate of quality opponents. Unlike Baylor, the Musketeers havent faced a team with a national ranking attached to it yet this season.Xavier defeated Missouri, Clemson and Northern Iowa twice during a stretch of four games last month.Now the Musketeers play their first game on an opponents home floor this season -- all seven of Xaviers previous contests were either at home in Cincinnati or at the Tire Pros Invitational in Orlando -- as well as their first ranked foe.Xavier coach Chris Mack knows his team will be fully focused on Baylor.Theres so much respect for the type of program that Baylors had for several years, Mack said. (Our players) saw what they did down in the Bahamas. Theres no trick, theres no science for getting our guys up for the game.With hype and motivation equal on both sides, the game could come down to whether or not Xavier can hit shots against Baylors treacherous zone defense. The Bears deploy 7-foot forward Jo Lual-Acuil and 6-10 forward Johnathan Motley in the interior. And Mack said everyone in the Bears 1-3-1 zone knows his responsibility to limit open looks.Were going to have to find soft spots in the zone and were going to have to make some shots, obviously, and then were going to have to try to rebound and get second opportunities, Mack said. Baylor makes it tough. Theyre big and they put that 7-footer under the rim. Its a challenge but we wouldnt have it any other way.The Musketeers will try to attack the zone and crash the boards with a quartet of tall guards and 6-10 center Sean OMara.Drew seemed to be just as concerned about stopping Xaviers lineup on the offensive end as Mack was about combatting the Baylor zone.We havent faced a team with as much height across the board, basically a team of four guards at 6-6, athletic, can shoot it, post it, drive it, Drew said. With that, it also makes it difficult to defend because, with a lot of shooters, you never know which one is going to be hot that day. Its easy to see why theyre such a good team. 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Harry Carson Jersey .Y. -- The Buffalo Sabres have placed centre Cody Hodgson on injured reserve and recalled two players from their AHL affiliate in Rochester. BELLEFONTE, Pa. -- Jurors in a former?Penn State??assistant coachs defamation and whistleblower lawsuit against the university heard?Tuesday about a flood of news coverage that swamped its public relations department in the days after Jerry Sandusky was charged with child molestation.Lawyers for the university and former assistant coach Mike McQueary reviewed several articles as a second day of testimony began in his lawsuit over how he was treated after Sandusky was arrested.Many of them appeared to be highly critical of McQueary, who says he saw Sandusky abuse a child in February 2001 but did not intervene or call police. He reported the matter the next day to then-head football coach Joe Paterno and more than a week later to two top school administrators.Former university spokesman Bill Mahon testified that his email and phone were slammed with inquiries, and the staff struggled to keep track of the intense coverage in November 2011.McQueary is seeking more than $4 million in back wages and other claims, saying he was retaliated against for the help he gave prosecutors and police in convicting Sanddusky in 2012.ddddddddddddThe first afternoon witness was expected to be former Penn State general counsel Cynthia Baldwin, who was at a meeting in which officials drafted a statement in support of the two other administrators that McQueary says defamed him.Baldwin, also a former university trustee and briefly a member of the state Supreme Court, is a key figure in the criminal case against the administrators who met with McQueary in 2001 about his report on Sandusky and the boy in a team shower.As a result of her actions before a grand jury, a state appeals court earlier this year threw out many of the charges against former athletic director Tim Curley and former vice president Gary Schultz over their handling of the report from Sandusky.Curley, Schultz and former university president Graham Spanier, who wrote the statement that McQueary alleges defamed him, still await trial on charges of failure to properly report suspected abuse and endangering the welfare of children. 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