Final Dayton thoughts
I don’t know that the plus-minus stats mean much off this game — the final numbers in a case like this are very much a function of time on the court – but here they are, upside down:
Liddell -22
Meyer -20
Polk -19
Brown -16
Husak -13
Lisch -12
Eckerle -7
Eberhardt -7
Knollmeyer -7
Relphorde -6
Mitchell -6
Jacks, Jones 0
Liddell has been the leading rebounder the past three games.
The 13,435 fans at Dayton last night was the biggest crowd SLU has played in front of this season.
Dayton 47.1 percent on 3’s is one of the better numbers against SLU this season. All the better ones were in the first eight games.
On further reflection, I was amazed at how many zeroes there were in Luke Meyer’s line last night. No assists, no turnovers, no blocks, plus just one rebound. He had just one foul. It was his lowest scoring game of the season at 2 points. He had a couple of two-point games last year.
Dwayne Polk: No points for fifth time in past six games. And no assists. It’s the third time this season he’s had no points and no assists. The others were Missouri State and GW.
Can’t say that Relphorde or Mitchell showed much in their late-game appearances.
No team rebounds for SLU for the first time this season. I have no idea of the significance off that, and I doubt there is any.
Majerus made a comment to me when before the tournament at Pitt to start the season that it might come in handy down the road if they were “fortunate” enough to make the conference tournament. I think SLU will make the tournament, but one byproduct of the A-10’s scheduling system, which gives bad opponents to bad teams, is that La Salle could get four wins by beating Richmond twice and St. Bonaventure twice, while SLU and George Washington don’t have that luxury. St. Bonaventure may run the table and lose every conference game, but the race as to who is the other team to miss out may hinge very much on the schedule. Right now, GW is in 13th at 1-5, SLU is 2-4. GW plays SLU, Rhode Island and Xavier twice, which is a tough one. SLU gets GW, Dayton and UMass twice, which is only a little easier. It may take six wins to make the conference tournament this year.
I don’t know if anyone will read this, since it’s in response to an old blog entry, but the only significance of the lack of team rebounds is that it means Dayton never knocked a rebound attempt out of bounds. Nearly all team rebounds occur when the ball is knocked out of bounds after the shot. And if Dayton blocked any shots (I haven’t looked at the box score), they kept them in play or they went out off of a Billiken player.