Sorry I’m late on this but I was at Chaifetz till about 1 a.m., so everything’s a bit late. SLU seems to have St.  Joe’s number. That’s three in a row against the Hawks, SLU’s longest active win streak against any A-10 school, including the bad ones.

SLU sits in sixth place in the league, half a game behind St. Joe’s Someone asked last week about SLU finishing 10-6 and I kind of put it off, saying we’d know better after the next two games. If SLU can beat Dayton, 10-6 is a real possibility, because they’d have to take just two of the final three. After Dayton, St. Bonaventure and La Salle are games in which SLU should be favored. I would think they’d be underdogs at Duquesne.

But 10-6 might not get them into the top 4 in the league. The top four are now Dayton, Xavier, Temple and Rhode Island, and SLU has lost to all of them, giving those teams the tiebreaker edge. For SLU to pass Rhode Island, if SLU was 10-6, Rhody would have to go 1-3 and Rhody closes with Fordham, Dayton, Duquesne and UMass (in Kingston). They should take two of those games.

It’s a bit early for a lot of math — OK, maybe not — but SLU’s only chance to get into the top four seems to me to require a win over Dayton. That’s because the one tiebreaker SLU can win is a three-way tie for fourth with Rhody and St. Joe’s. Since SLU beat St. Joe’s, St. Joe’s beat Rhody and Rhody beat SLU, SLU’s loss in Kingston won’t factor in. The next tiebreaker would be who beat the best teams in the league. If all three have lost to first-place Xavier (St. Joe’s still has to play them), then it’s who did best against the second place team. If that’s Dayton, SLU would be the only team in the bunch to have beaten them. A three-way tie at 10-6 isn’t a longshot, but it’s a complicated parlay. And watch for Dayton down the stretch. The Flyers play at SLU, Rhode Island and Xavier and host Temple and Duquesne. That’s probably the toughest schedule anyone has to close out the season and the Flyers have not been a good road team.

That is, I’ll admit, getting a little ahead of ourselves, but if we can’t do that, why do we have a blog?

By the way, if you think Xavier is going to win the league and you want to avoid them as long as possible — and I’d recommend that to SLU — you want to finish 2nd, 3rd, sixth or seventh. Or 10th. I think SLU’s in good position to get sixth or seventh.

I didn’t see a 73-71 win coming. 71 points is the most by a SLU opponent in a Billikens victory since their 81-74 win at La Salle last year. St. Joe’s shot 57.1 percent from the field, and the only team to shoot higher than that against the Bills this season was Nebraska, which won by 14 points. In the past four years, no SLU opponent has shot that well and lost and I would imagine in the college basketball universe at large that’s pretty rare. St. Joe’s had a run at the end of the first half when they scored on eight of 10 possessions, and the times they didn’t score they turned the ball over. They had a similar stretch at the start of the second half.

SLU’s PPP was 1.14. It’s defensive PPP was 1.07.

SLU has won five of six in conference play. The only comparable run since they entered the A-10 was when they won seven of eight late in the 05-06 season.

Kwamain Mitchell was the leading scorer for the second straight game.

This game followed the SLU format for a close win: get a lead and hold on, relying on your defense to save you.

Though some of the totals are skewed by overtimes, here are SLU’s point totals in the past six games are: 88, 78, 85, 69, 61 and 73.

SLU had eight offensive rebounds that it turned into 14 second half points. SLU cut its turnovers from 20 against Rhode Island to nine against St. Joe’s. The Hawks did get 13 points off turnovers.

Really good foul shooting from both teams; SLU was 17 of 20, with two misses by Lisch, and St. Joe’s was 11 of 13.

With Mitchell’s scoring up and Liddell’s down, SLU has gotten the bulk of its scoring from freshmen in the past two games. On Wednesday, SLU had 40 of its 73 points from freshmen.

Kevin Lisch went over the 1,600 point mark. He’s at 1,601. He’s 103 behind Scott Highmark with at least five games to play and the prospects for a sixth keep getting better. At five, he’ll need to average just over 20 points. At six, he’ll need to average about 17. Lisch didn’t have a rebound. It’s the first time since his sophomore season he didn’t have a rebound in a game. His 6 to 1 assist-turnover ratio is his best since he had six assists and no turnovers in the second GW game last year. But he was 2 of 8 from the floor, on the heels of a 4 of 16 performance against Rhody. (That’s 6 of 24 for the past two games.) “There’s only one shot in there I didn’t like him taking,” Majerus said.

Tommie Liddell had four points for the second straight game, which was enough to put him over the 1,500 mark. His eight points over two games is the lowest in his SLU career. But his defense is shining and Majerus liked his seven rebounds and four assists against no turnovers. “Tommie had a couple of the defensive plays of the night and leads us with seven defensive rebounds and plays a great floor game,” Majerus said. “He made some really good passes. Tommie had four assists and no turnovers and Kevin had six. You’ve got your two seniors on a 10-1 and 17-9 as a team.”

Barry Eberhardt is unstoppable! He had 14 points, five rebounds and three assists and for a while, I was weighing the possibility of the school’s first triple-double being by Eberhardt. “Barry did a lot of good things,” Majerus said. “He scored those baskets. He’s 3 to 1 assist to turnovers and he gets three offensive boards, but he had those three offensive boards in the first half. I wish he would have gotten a couple more in the second half. He played a lot of minutes and Willie and Brett did exactly what we wanted them to do, they stayed fresh.” In the past six games, he’s averaging more than 12 points. “I see him making quicker decisions, whether it’s taking a shot or just moving the ball,” Lisch said. “He made a couple of nice passes. It’s just knowing what you’re going to do with the ball before you get it.” Eberhardt credits Lisch with getting him to be more aggressive with the ball.

Four minutes for Paul Eckerle.

Kwamain Mitchell hit five 3’s. Lisch is the only other SLU player to hit five in a game this season. His assist-turnover ratio has been more modest the past few games. He was 2-2 on Wednesday.

Brian Conklin had six points and two rebounds. “I really laid Conklin out tonight,” Majerus said, “and he came back and responded. He got the next basket on the right block. I was so angry with him because he didn’t help out on that pick at the other end of the floor in front of their bench. He said I told the guy to go under and I said I don’t want you to tell anyone to go under any more. You’re not able to make that decision. I’ll live with the mistake. I ripped into him and he came back and handled the criticism the way you want to handle it.”

For the second straight game, Kyle Cassity drove to the basket and scored, which is a good sign of him being more aggressive, though he’s still not aggressive enough. “I thought Kyle played a very good game again,” Majerus said. “Kyle did a very good job defensively. I’d like for him to look to score. He had a big assist, a big drive from the left side, he finished it in a bit of traffic with his right hand, he is right handed of course.”

Brett Thompson got the start, not too surprising against a big guy like Nivins. He played his normal minutes, 12, and had two points, a rebound and three fouls. Nate Latsch has pointed out that Thompson’s numbers are similar to Bryce Husak’s as a junior. That’s a good sign for SLU.

It got lost in the shuffle, but Willie Reed’s three-point play, where Lisch’s layin spun around the rim and went out and then Reed threw the rebound up while being fouled, only to have it go in, was a big play. Reed missed his first free throw, then made the last three. (Having written about his improved free throw shooting, I feel personally invested in this now.) He had four fouls for the third straight game. In the past three games, he has no assists, which isn’t too surprising, but seven turnovers.

Walk-on Andre Craig hasn’t gotten in a game since UMBC. He’d have had a chance against Fordham, but the walk-ons didn’t make that trip because it was the long road trip.

St. Joe’s shot 65.2 percent in the second half. That’s the best half anyone has had against SLU this season.

In the past four seasons, SLU is 7-0 with James Breeding reffing the game. I think the refs came close to giving Phil Martelli a T a couple of times last night. Not surprisingly, Martelli thought SLU was fouling Nivins a lot under the basket. And there was the time when Eberhardt tripped Nivins and it wasn’t called.

Good housekeeping award: Martelli went on the court after one time out to pick up a fallen feather from the Hawk. Prior to the game, Martelli had compared the previous week’s game to an exam, and that when the Hawks lost both, they failed the exam. With their third loss in a row,  this could be another F. He was in the locker room for about 20 minutes after the game.

I was talking to St. Joe’s broadcaster and ESPN.com bracketologist Joe Lunardi before the game and he’s got a spread sheet on his computer for his NCAA tournament projections like you wouldn’t believe. It’s a thing of beauty. And I got to see him lower Illinois’ seeding after their ugly loss to Penn State.

Majerus praised the crowd and said that the next time SLU has a late start, if people can’t use their tickets, they should contact him and he’ll find people to use them so the seats don’t go unused.

I’ll have the plus-minus in a bit.