On deadline last night, I wrote that SLU's 73-68 win over Xavier was the team's biggest under coach Rick Majerus. With time for reflection -- a few hours of sleep, talking with Earl Austin Jr. on the flight home -- I think it is.
Going into last night's game, SLU was 0-6 against Xavier under Majerus and 0-5 against Temple. Those have been the two dominant teams in the league the past five years. SLU has come close -- two 2-point losses to Xavier, an overtime and a 4-point loss to Temple -- but hasn't gotten a win against either team.
What else would be under consideration? SLU's 71-66 win over Dayton on the final day of the 2009-10 season was big, but that game's main accomplishment was giving SLU fourth place in the A-10. SLU also won at Dayton last season, a resounding 69-51 win, but it improved the Billikens to 6-9 in league play. The other competition would be this year: the wins over Washington that established SLU as being for real, and the win over Oklahoma to win the 76 Classic in Anaheim.
Those were emotional and significant wins, but I don't think either carries the impact of beating Xavier at Xavier. This may not be the best Xavier team, but it's still pretty good. And keep in mind that Dayton, which is Xavier's biggest rival, goes to Cintas Center every year and doesn't win. In 2008, Dayton was ranked 16th and went to Xavier. It lost by 26 points. So the building has chewed up and spit out a lot of teams. Xavier had 43 A-10 games there and not a whole lot of nonconference games: Here are the nonconference teams to have won at Xavier in the past six years: Oral Roberts, Gonzaga (both this year), Florida, Butler, Tennessee and Bucknell. (I have no explanation for Bucknell.)
I was talking about SLU's defense with Majerus on Tuesday and asked him the effort against Duquesne was the team's best of the season -- by points per possession, it's in the running -- and he countered that his team had played pretty good defense all season. He asked me for a game in which they hadn't played good defense. I offered the first half of the Charlotte game. "You raise a legitimate point," he said.
And if you think about where SLU was in that situation, they were 1-2 in league play after losing to Dayton and Temple and now had thrown out a clunker. Starting 1-3 would have been dreadful. But the team straightened out its act, beat Charlotte, beat Duquesne and now won at Xavier. SLU is 4-2, which puts them tied with Dayton, UMass, La Salle and St. Bonaventure. (Temple is 3-2.) SLU still has games left with all the other 4-2 teams, but only two of its final 10 games are against teams with top 50 RPIs (Dayton and Xavier). SLU has a chance to make some hay.
Of course, they can also go out and negate the value of this win by doing something silly and losing a game they should win. And a win on Saturday against UMass, which is 15-5 and has an RPI of 65, would be great for consolidating the benefits of the Xavier win. SLU and Temple are the only teams in the league so far to have won twice on the road.
SLU had one of its best first halves of the season, shooting 51.7 percent and scoring 41 points. SLU has scored more in the first half only twice this season: Washington (50), George Washington (42). (If they could get Washington State or Martha Washington on the schedule, they'd probably clean up on them too.)
SLU has 10 regular season games to go, plus a game in the conference tournament. At 16-4, they've effectively clinched a winning record. I suppose it's possible they could lose their next 11 to get to 16-15 and still get invited to a postseason tournament, where they could lose their next game and finish .500. But I doubt it. The last time SLU had more wins after 20 games was in 93-94, when they were 19-1. That team finished the regular season 22-4.
SLU trailed once in the game, for a total of nine seconds, at 4-3. Had they lost, the 14-point lead they let slip away would have been the biggest of the season in a loss. Of course, they still did let a 14-point lead disappear. They just won the game.
Which was the most impressive thing about the win. SLU hasn't had many games where they have held on like they did on Saturday. They beat Charlotte by a point, but that was more of a case of the game ending rather than SLU holding on. That's a good skill to have, and one that will serve them well. It speaks to their increased experience.
SLU's points per possession was 1.05. Its defensive PPP was .98.
SLU had assists on 81 percent of its baskets. That's a season high.
Xavier shot 32 free throws, which is an awfully big number, especially if you're not a team that's being fouled intentionally to get the ball back. While SLU's free throw shooting down the stretch was impressive as they made their last nine and 13 of their last 14, Xavier's was amazing as they made 29 of 32, a 90.6 percentage. The only better games against SLU in the past five seasons were teams that shot 100 percent with limited chances (Dayton went 7 for 7, GW 3 for 3).
Kwamain Mitchell had his run of double-digit scoring games snapped at six by finishing with nine. But he had a whopping 7 to 1 assist-to-turnover ratio. He's had at least three fouls in five of SLU's past six games, which is a lot compared to his early season games. Majerus was not happy with the foul on a 3-pointer by Mitchell. He was +1 in 32 minutes.
The last couple games have had some unconventional subsitution patterns, so I'm not totally sure about the drop in Kyle Cassity's minutes. He played just 12 minutes against Xavier, his fewest of the season, just five in the second half as Brian Conklin (17), Dwayne Evans (16), Rob Loe (17!), Mitchell (16) and Jordair Jett (14) all got most of the second half minutes. Cassity was on the court at the end, presumably for free throw purposes. He was 0 for 2 on 3's. He was +5. Majerus wants him to shoot more. Assistant coach Chris Harriman talked after the last game about how much better the offense flows with Cassity on the court.
Evans was +6 in 26 minutes, and had the only field goal for SLU, a nice little baseline drive, in the final 7 minutes. A note: A lot of times people, hopefully not me, will carp on how long a team has gone without a field goal; often, the team will have made a bunch of free throws in that span, and just not made a field goal because they were fouled and didn't get the chance. SLU attempted just five field goals in the final 7 minutes. Evans had three turnovers, two in the first couple minutes.
When SLU's 3-point shooting dried up, the focus of the offense became, Let's lob the ball into Brian. It actually worked pretty well. he had 13 points in the second half -- seven at the foul line -- and would have had two more if not for a miss on an open layin and two missed free throws. "Rob decided he would throw it up and make me look like a tight end," said Conklin, who played tight end in high school. "I knew I had to go up and get it. I really wanted that win. Rob and I talked, we have fun with the high low. We started doing it last year. Luckily they fouled me and I got to the free throw line." Conklin said Cintas is one of his two favorite buildings, along with Charlotte's. He was +5 in 25 minutes. He played just eight minutes in the first half because of foul trouble.
The best game of Rob Loe's SLU career? Maybe. He played 17 minutes in the second half, more than he has played in 13 games this season, and he wouldn't have been out there if he wasn't defending well. Majerus said after the game that the defensive effort of the team's big men would go unnoticed. He matched his career high with 32 minutes. Offensively, he had a big first half, with 13 points and three 3's. He didn't hit a 3 in the second half and had the one of the worst free throws you'll see -- Majerus said after the game that if someone had bet on the game and saw that, they'd think something weird was going on -- but he had a steal and a blocked shot that figured in the finish. He also had a bad turnover when he threw into triple coverage for Conklin in the post. He was +5 in 32 minutes. His eight rebounds were one off his career high.
Jett was -8 in 28 minutes, largely because he was on the court for almost the entire time as Xavier cut the lead from 14 to zero. He had a bad turnover late in the game, throwing to where Evans used to be with 90 seconds left, and on SLU's next possession, he tried an underhand reverse layup that bounced on the rim but didn't go in. Then he committed his fifth foul. But he made five of six free throws and has made real progress in that in recent games.
Mike McCall was +9 in 23 minutes, though his offensive contribution was four points, all on free throws, including two after Xavier's Chris Mack got a technical. He had three assists, no turnovers and two steals and he had some tough defensive assignments. In six league games, McCall is +48, the bst mark on the team.
Cody Ellis was +5 in 14 minutes and he barely played in the second half (three minutes) as Majerus stuck with Loe. His 11 first-half points were instrumental to SLU going ahead. He also blocked a shot.
Cory Remekun got three fouls in eight minutes. He played two minutes in the second half. He was -3.
The other guys didn't get in the game.
Here's the Cincinnati Enquirer's take on the game.
Elsewhere in the league, Dayton, which had been doing well, ran into trouble at St. Joseph's, shooting just 35 percent from the field. (Dayton is past a tough stretch of its schedule.) Ronald Roberts had the final 15 points in the game for St. Joe's, on his way to 27 points. The win is no doubt good for St. Joe's confidence.
La Salle had a great shooting night as it won its 13th straight at home, Richmond took apart reeling Fordham, Charlotte lost to Temple, its fourth straight defeat and things don't seem to be going well:
The 49ers (10-9, 2-4) learned before the game that freshman point guard Pierria Henry would miss about two weeks with a sprained left knee. Then coach Alan Major announced that junior forward K.J. Sherrill would serve a one-game suspension for breaking undisclosed team rules, and that senior guard Derrio Green and senior forward Javarris Barnett would be held out of the starting lineup, also for undisclosed disciplinary reasons.
And St. Bonaventure beat Rhode Island. UMass, SLU's next opponent, was off Wednesday. Here's the latest on them.
Programming note: I'm not making the trip to UMass this weekend, so I'll be watching on TV like the rest of you. It's nothing personal; we're just looking for chances to save money along the way and this is a good chance.
LIFE ON THE ROAD
When you travel a lot, you like to make things simple. I usually stay at the same type of hotel and rent cars from the same company. Let's face, when you pull into the rental car return lot at 5 a.m., you're sort of on autopilot. The less there is to think about the better.
Usually I rent from Hertz, but many times this season, Enterprise has had a rate that was too good to pass up. As usual for a trip to Cincinnati, I flew into Louisville, about a 90 minute drive away, because flying there costs about half of what it costs to fly to Cincinnati. The woman at the Enterprise counter gave me the key to my car and sent me on my way. When I got to the lot, I found that, while I had asked for an economy car, I had the keys to a minivan. I may be 6-foot-4, but really legroom wasn't going to be an issue. I walked back inside and asked for something smaller, which they gave me.
There are a row of hotels just on the other side of the freeway from the Louisville airport. It's where I always stay. There are 3 Marriott properties along that street: a Courtyard, a Residence Inn and a Spring Hill Suites. I remember looking online at the prices, and that the Spring Hill was cheapter by a few bucks, but I didn't remember which one I booked and I hadn't written it down. So I pulled into the Spring Hill and asked if I had a reservation there. They said no, but I could use their public computer to find out. So I sat down, went to my Marriott account and found that I had a reservation nowhere. Apparently torn with indecision on which place to go with, I never actually decided. Turns out the Spring Hill still had the lower rate, so I went back to the front desk and asked for a room. First time I've ever done that. I've forgotten to rent a car before, but never to book a hotel room. I think, though, I'm one up on one member of the traveling party who in booking his return flight booked it for Feb. 26 rather than Jan. 26.
After that got settled, it was off to Cincinnati. After a quick stop to pick up my parking pass for the game at the team hotel, I had some time to kill before the game. My first stop was the boyhood home of William Howard Taft, the 27th president of the United States and the 10th chief justice of the Supreme Court. Cincinnatians are very proud of the Tafts. One of Taft's sons was a U.S. senator, another the mayor of Cincinnati. There's a Taft art museum, a Taft theater where the Cincinnati Symphony plays, a Taft school, a street. You get the idea. Taft's boyhood home is run by the National Park Service and, as they tell you, is the nation's only memorial to Taft. I had no trouble finding a spot in the small lot in front of the visitor's center. It was empty. I went inside to find that, not only was I the only person there, I was the only person who had been there all day.
So I watched a 14-minute video on the life of Taft (want to learn more about Taft? Read this biography of him by my brother. And then you can follow the links and read bios of every president), viewed an exhibit on the Taft family which, because of bad punctuation (I hope) states that after being president, Jimmy Carter became chief justice of the Supreme Court, and then was given a tour of the house by Dennis, a volunteer interpreter for the Park Service. It was a very nice tour and Dennis answered all of my questions except one. (Taft graduated second in his class at Yale. Who was No. 1?)
From there, it was off to the Cincinnati Art Museum, which I'm happy to say doesn't take itself too seriously. It has a series of directional messages posted on the wall just above the floor telling you how to get places. One read: Women's restroom. Fresh flowers included. Across the hall was another that read: Men's restroom. Sorry guys, no fresh flowers for you. There was a nice collection of Picasso prints, though a Monet exhibit doesn't open for a few weeks. Admission is free, but you have to pay to park. I also signs for the DeWitt Entrance to the museum, which I suspect is somehow connected to the people who own the Cardinals.
After that, it was off to Cintas Center, and then the always pleasant late-night drive down I-71 from Cincinnati to Louisville. At midnight, that's a very dark stretch of road. Thankfully, it wasn't raining, since an awful lot of trucks use I-71. By the time I got back to Louisville, the SLU basketball team, which had chartered home, was already safely back in St. Louis.
