The SLU basketball team has had less than two weeks of practice before tonight’s exhibition game against Arkansas-Fort Smith. The school’s record on exhibition games are spotty — they don’t get listed in the media guide, for instance — so it’s hard to say if this is the earliest game SLU has ever played, but it most likely is.

So with about 10 days of practice and a young team that has five guys who barely know what’s going on, what can be expected? (Especially since UAFS apparently has a very young team too.)

“It’s going to be bad ball,” Rick Majerus said. “It’s going to be guys making mistakes that young guys make. But it can be played hard, so I’m hoping that we can win the effort and energy game and that we improve throughout the course of the game.”

And while the freshmen try to put what they’ve learned in very limited practice time to work, it’s a chance for the team’s four sophomores to show something too.

“It’s an evaluation too on my part,” Majerus said. “I’m looking to see the leadership of the sophomores. Probably I’m looking for a good defensive effort, a better effort to pick up the six rebounds lost by Liddell. Things of that nature.”

That may be an unappreciated absence for SLU this season. Liddell was the team’s top rebounder last year, averaging 5.7 per game. That’s more than Willie Reed averaged, more than Brian Conklin averaged. The guards on this year’s team are of a different type than Liddell.

“We’re going to have to gang rebound, we’re going to have team rebound and long ball rebound,” Majerus said.

It’s hard for me to say who will start. Kwamain Mitchell, Reed and Conklin are givens. Do Kyle Cassity and Femi John get the look because they at least know their way around? Among the freshmen, Christian Salecich is easily the furthest along after his summer with the Australian junior team. (Though Majerus says he’s concerned about burnout with Salecich, not to mention the hit he’ll take by being thousands of miles from home and on his own for the first time. This is another area where having Cody Ellis would help.) Jon Smith has apparently been a good rebounder in early practices. Majerus said Jeff Reid has been hurt, though it won’t keep him out of the game. As Majerus will say, starting is for high school, which is where much of this team was just a few months ago.

Other things:

Still nothing new on Ellis, though at this point, I can’t see how he can play in the first semester. (I’ll note that Florida just had a recruit from Israel get NCAA certified earlier this week.) The last day of fall final exams is Dec. 15, so if Ellis gets in, I think he’s eligible to play the day after. That would mean he would miss the first nine games of the season for sure. But Majerus isn’t going there yet.

Said Majerus about Ellis: “I feel good about his attitude. His attitude has been unbelievable. I mean unbelievable. So he’s not gotten down, not feeling sorry for himself, he’s trying to work his way through these problems. And we’re trying to work our way through it with him. I mean, I had a long talk with him four days ago and it was great. Sometimes adversity makes you better. I’m hoping the adversity we have this season makes us better next year and that’s been the case with a lot of things. We’ve just run into a spate of bad luck.”

SLU has one walk-on this year, Darrin Young, who played at Kirkwood last year and SLUH for three years before that. He’s a 5-10 guard who averaged 10.8 points and 5.8 assists per game last season. He also played football, and was a two-time all-conference honorable mention defensive back.