Well, I don’t think we’ve seen the promised train wreck yet, but the last two games are proof that this team is going to take some time to come together. Defensively, SLU has struggled, and there aren’t enough experienced players for Majerus to put out there to get them through tough times. (And even the experienced guys are having problems.) And still they came very close to winning on Saturday and very close 10 days ago to beating Kent State. Just a few more defensive stops here and there and SLU is 4-1.

But they’re not, and SLU is under .500 for the first time since the ‘04-05 season.

It would help if SLU could shoot better. Right now, the offense goes in fits and starts.

Here are SLU’s point totals after 40 minutes this season: 48, 59, 53, 57, 57. Curiously, the two games they’ve won are the games where they’ve scored the fewst, the 48 vs. UMSL and 53 vs. BC.

This was the first game this season where SLU was outrebounded. Their eight offensive rebounds were the fewest this season.

This was the second straight game where SLU has gotten off to a bad start and Majerus has had to call a timeout in the first two minutes. They made it four seconds farther this time.

SLU’s turnovers are a problem. A lot of them are just careless or self-inflicted. Brian Conklin’s three offensive fouls are a sign of that. (Paul Eckerle had a bunch of charges in his first game last year, prompting someone to note Borgia High must not have played teams with help-side defense.)

Here’s a rundown of SLU’s turnovers on Saturday:

Mitchell passes to nowhere

Liddell travels

Lisch is called for over and back after losing the ball while dribbling

Thompson called for an illegal screen.

Cotto travels

Mitchell travels

Conklin charges

Lisch makes a bad pass

Liddell drops a pass from Mitchell

Conklin charges

Cotto charges

Thompson travels

Mitchell travels beyond the arc

Liddell dribbles into traffic, loses the ball

Conklin charges

Mitchell, under pressure, throws the ball away

No one plays a perfect game, but more than a few of those were unprovoked.

Detroit, meanwhile, had 19 turnovers, which SLU got just 12 points off of. Detroit also blocked seven SLU shots, the most shots SLU has had blocked this season.

Kevin Lisch was 2 of 11 from the field, one game after going 2 for 12. It’s not necessarily his 3-point shooting; he’s 3 of 12 on 3’s in those games, 1 for 11 on non-3’s. Lisch is up to 1,309 career points, 16 behind Lewis McKinney, who’s in 12th all-time for SLU.

It’s not clear why Liddell didn’t start against Detroit, though it’s probably because of his defensive play against Nebraska. He must have done well enough to get the nod in the second half ahead of Kyle Cassity, who started in his place. Liddell was also kept out of the starting lineup in the fifth game of last season, but that was because he was late for a team meeting. He didn’t appear to be late for anything this time.

Majerus has used three different lineups in five games. It looked as if he had settled on the starting lineup of Mitchell, Lisch, Liddell, Conklin and Thompson, though I’m guessing Thompson’s spot may now vary situationally. He didn’t start on Saturday and part of SLU’s early troubles were that there was no one to guard Detroit’s 7-3 Jason Bennett, who faced a severely mismatched Conklin. Bennett had eight points in the game and got six of them in the first 1:52. In his remaining 21 minutes of action, he had two points.

In five games, Brett Thompson has made 3 of 13 shots.

Kyle Cassity has made just 2 of 10 shots. He’s still hesitant on his shots, a problem that goes back to his high school days. He tried his first non-3’s of the season against Detroit, driving to the basket and finding little room to shoot.

Barry Eberhardt had about 15 fans on hand and played a good game, though he did pick up four fouls. It was his first start since the opener. He grabbed one offensive rebound, on a missed foul shot, which brought out a yell of praise from Majerus.

The shooting percentages in the past four halves for SLU’s opponents: .542, .650, .333, .588.

Life on the road:

With a few hours to kill this morning before the game, I ventured out to Belle Isle in the middle of the Detroit River and visited the Dossin Great Lakes Museum, which recounts the history of shipping and boating on the Great Lakes. There are lots of pictures and models of old ships and the pilot house of a ship that used to sail on the Great Lakes. They also have the anchor from the Edmund Fitzgerald, which is neat, but is slightly less neat since it’s an anchor that fell off the ship in the Detroit River years before its celebrated sinking on Lake Superior. The ship’s bell, which was actually recovered from the wreck, is in the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum in Paradise, MI.

(And for good measure, here’s Gordon Lightfoot to tell you about the Edmund Fitzgerald)

Detroit’s Calihan Hall has an old feel to it; plenty of wooden seats that rise steeply from the court. The announced attendance was 2,123. Detroit is an urban campus and they lock many of the entrances at night. I effectively made a lap around campus before I could find a way out onto the streets.