Sorry for the delay. I was traveling.

After getting checked out at the hospital late Thursday, Kwamain Mitchell flew home with the team on Thursday night. That’s about all there is to day. He is, in the truest sense of the word, day to day. It’s too soon to say what his status is for Sunday’s game with Richmond. If he spends today fine and with no headaches, that’s good, though I’ve spend enough time around hockey players to know it’s how you feel the morning after a practice that determines whether or not you’re ready to go.

There were league meetings being held in Philadelphia this week and there was an alumni function before the game, so a large part of the SLU athletic department administration was on hand at the game, and everyone mobilized after Mitchell got hurt. That had to make things go as smoothly as possible.

Now, for the less serious stuff …

At halftime yesterday, I was heading back to the press room when an NBA scout stopped me. “This is a Division I team?” he said. “They should refund the people half their ticket price.”

Now, this scout has also been at the SLU-Xavier game, so that could probably explain his feeling that SLU isn’t very good. (And I felt a bit sheepish about having told him over dinner they were making progress.) If all you saw were the Xavier and Temple games, you’d be confident in saying this team isn’t doing well.

I might not go that far, but this is a team that has shown a maddening inconsistency and a complete inability to keep its head in the game on the road. Coming up next week is a trip to Dayton, which doesn’t bode well, and then a trip to Fordham. If SLU can win any game on the road, it will be in the Bronx. That may be the big test. If they don’t win there, any road win would come as a major upset.

In SLU’s two A-10 losses, they’ve been outscored 135-84. Now, those have been against definitely the best team in the league and possibly the second-best team in the league. Dayton may well be the second or third best team.

I mentioned this last season and I’ll say it again for the late arrivals. People talk about a team’s record in close games as an indicator of who’s good and who’s bad, but close games may turn on just one play, which makes them close to random events. A missed shot or a turnover is the difference between a one-point win and a one-point loss. But a team that wins lopsided games? That’s a good team. Here’s how A-10 teams shape up in games decided by 25 or more points: Charlotte 0-1; Duquesne 1-2; Fordham 0-2; GW 0-1; La Salle 1-0; UMass 0-2; Rhode Island 3-0; Richmond 1-0; St. Joe’s 1-0; SLU 0-2; Temple 1-0; Xavier 2-0.

The attendance at the Liacouras Center at Temple was 4,856. Large parts of the upper decks were empty. There is so much college basketball in Philadelphia that unless you’re doing very well, it’s hard to draw fans. And the night before, there were two games in Philadelphia, Duquesne vs. St. Joe’s at the Palestra and Penn at La Salle. So for the casual fan, this was probably a night to stay home.

I didn’t realize it until after the game, but SLU outscored Temple in the second half 24-22. SLU has outscored its opponent in the second half in seven of the past eight games. Xavier is the exception.

When SLU fell behind by 33 with about 4 1/2 minutes to go, it was the team’s biggest deficit of the season. SLU never led.

SLU’s 16 points in the first half matched its 16 at SIUC for worst this season.

SLU shot 29.8 percent from the field, on the heels of a 51.2 percent performance against GW. SLU missed a lot of open looks. 29.8 is the low for the season, the lowest since the GW game last year.

SLU was outrebounded by 13, its biggest margin of the season, but that was to be expected since SLU missed so many shots and Temple didn’t.

SLU’s PPP was .65. Against Xavier it was .69, so Thursday’s game takes honors as the least productive offense this season.

In a fact that is merely strange, SLU’s opponents have taken 52 shots in each of thepast three games. UMass and Temple both made 28 of 52 shots for 53.8 percent. SLU beat UMass by five, lost to Temple by 25.

SLU was called for just six fouls.

Kevin Lisch was 0 for 10 from the field. I can’t think of a worse 0-fer, though he was 1 for 10 last season at Boston College and 1 for 9 at George Washington. The last time he went scoreless in a game was a freshman against Oakland, when he was 0 for 2 in 14 minutes.He was two games away from making his first start. The Liacouras Center has been a bad place for Lisch. Two years ago, he strained his left calf in a game there and missed the next game. In two games at Liacouras, he’s scored five points.

Which reminds me that the loss snapped a three-game winning streak for SLU in Philadelphia.

Tommie Liddell pretty much took it on himself to score in the second half, when he got nine of his 12 points.

Barry Eberhardt had six rebounds and has done a good job under the boards in recent games.

Brian Conklin has made 10 of his past 13 shots over three games. He had just one rebound in 21 minutes.

With the game out of hand, Kyle Cassity got 23 minutes, his most since Samford (28). He was 0 for 3 from the field and is 0 for 6 in the past two games. However, he has three assists in that time.

What to make of Brett Thompson? Five rebounds in 17 minutes is good, one of his best rebound per minute performances this season. He also had four turnovers and was 1 for 5 in shooting. SLU would get him the ball and he couldn’t hold on to it. I seem to recall a young Bryce Husak having the same issue.

Wille Reed lost the opening tip. I’ve got to go back through my numbers, but I think he won his first two opening tips and hasn’t won one since. I think SLU is something like 2-16 in opening tips. Reed’s line was almost idential to his line against GW: four points, four rebounds in 23 minutes. (He played 22 against GW.) And he was 2 for 5 on shooting instead of 2 for 3.

SLU’s 20.7 shooting in the first half was its worst 20 minutes of the season. The only team to shoot better than Temple did in the first half (64.3) was Nebraska in the second half (65).

SLU went to the foul line once in the second half. Other than Fresno State, when they didn’t go to the line in the first half, that’s the fewest this season. But you can’t complain about the officiating. SLU wasn’t doing anything to get fouled.

Standard plus-minus blowout disclaimer: Whoever plays the most has the worst number. For reference, I’ve included the minutes played after the plus-minus. Willie Reed’s number is good relative to his minutes.

Eckerle +6 / 11

Thompson -7 / 17

Reed -7 / 23

Eberhardt -18 / 19

Conklin -18 / 21

Mitchell -21 / 28

Lisch -22 / 28

Liddell -25 / 30

By the way, SLU shows up in this week’s Sports Illustrated, on Page 42. In SI’s story on J.J. Redick and Adam Morrison, they ran a college shot of Morrison from the SLU-Gonzaga game in ‘05. There’s Tommie, with very short hair, guarding Morrison. In the background, you can see Danny Brown and Wendell Bennett standing up and you can see about 1/3 of Soderberg’s body.

The non-basketball section:

Life on the road: Having seen Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, Valley Forge and the A-10 offices on previous trips to Philadelphia, and with a fairly short window, I stopped off at a house that Edgar Allan Poe used to live in. He only lived there a few years and there’s nothing left behind that’s his, but you can stand in the room where he did his writing, or the room where his young wife (really young; she was 13 when they got married) lay ill with tuberculosis. Have to confess, I was a bit concerned when the park ranger shut the door behind me to watch the video on Poe’s life. But, the door was not bricked up behind me. Poe was born on Jan. 19, so I missed his 200th birthday by a few days.

Then I headed off to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which was closed, but I climbed to the top of the steps made famous in Rocky. I did not raise my arms over my head, nor was I swarmed by school kids. The statue of Sylvester Stallone is no longer at the top of the stairs, and is now at the bottom of the hill. It’s a nice view of Philadelphia from the steps. What I think was the La Salle crew was running the stairs as training while I was there.