Well, Charlotte’s win over Xavier was interesting to see last night. The Muskies, who just a few weeks ago were too good for the A-10 and had nothing to learn from the league (sorry Paul Daugherty) have lost three of four, with the only win against Fordham and are no longer in command of their own destiny in the league. Even if Xavier wins out, it could finish tied for first — with a split of the season meetings — with Dayton before going to the tiebreakers. Charlotte by the way has won three of its past four with wins over Xavier and Dayton. The one loss is to SLU. You might pencil Charlotte in on the list of teams to avoid in the tournament. Elsewhere, GW beat St. Bonaventure. GW has a chance to catch the Bonnies for the last spot in the conference tournament.

My forecasting is historically bad, but the easiest schedule from here out among the leaders belongs to Temple, which has games with Bonnie, La Salle and GW, along with Dayton and St. Joe’s. Dayton, which is doing less well on the road, has three road games and home games against Temple and Duquesne.

As to what this means for SLU, it’s hard to say. If Xavier finishes second, then you want to be fifth, eighth or ninth to avoid them. BUt I think it’s a lot more likely for Xavier to run the table than Dayton. I think they’re going to slip up in there at least once, maybe twice. Heck, three times isn’t out of the question.

If Temple wins the league, Rhody would have the edge in a three-way tie among SLU, Rhody and St. Joe’s.

If the A-10 season ended today, SLU would get UMass in the first round, with the winner facing Temple. St. Joe’s would face St. Bonaventure, with the winner playing Rhode Island; Duquesne would play Charlotte (whose win lifted it from 12th to 10th) with the winner facing Xavier and Richmond would face La Salle with the winner playing Dayton.

Majerus talked after the game of having four freshmen on the court with Lisch for a while in the game. That hasn’t happened much at relevant times this season — late in one-sided games it’s not uncommon for there to be four freshmen and Eckerle — and he did for 68 seconds with SLU down 2. Cassity came in for Liddell, Conklin for Eberhardt and Thompson for Reed (a freshman push). When Liddell came in for Mitchell, SLU was up three. In between, there was the nice round of pingpong passing between Mitchell, Lisch and Cassity, a steal by Lisch and then a 3-pointer by Lisch.

It happened briefly in the first half against Charlotte — Mitchell, Liddell, Cassity, Reed, Conklin — and was a +3. Against Richmond, in 100 seconds of Lisch with Mitchell, Cassity, Reed and Conklin, SLU was -1. That same group was a plus-4 for a short time against Dayton. Majerus has yet to go with four freshmen all at once in the second half with the game still in doubt. Usually, he’s been doing it for about a minute in the first half.

Which leads us to a grab bag of plus-minus against St. Joe’s. I’ve said before close games are always interesting to look at because, well, it’s a close game and every point matters. The most surprising find to me was that Kwamain Mitchell, the leading scorer, was a minus 7. That doesn’t happen often because, obviously, the leading scorer is on the court for a lot of offense. Mitchell was a minus 5 in the second half, the result of coming back in the game when SLU had its biggest lead of the night at 7 points and staying out there as it went to two. In fact, all the second half numbers were interesting. St. Joe’s made its comeback with Mitchell, Lisch, Liddell, Eberhardt and Reed on the court. SLU pushed back ahead with Lisch, Cassity, Conklin, Thompson and mostly Liddell on the court. (Mitchell was out there for a few points.) In fact, it was the subs at 44-46 that keyed a 7-0 run that turned the game around.

Herewith, the plus-minus:

Lisch +9

Cassity +9

Conklin +4

Thompson +1

Eberhardt 0

Reed -1

Liddell -2

Eckerle -3

Mitchell -7