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St. Louis University did Tuesday night what it has done on several occasions this season: fall behind by double digits and battle to get back in the game, giving itself a chance to win, only to come up short.

There have been a few times when the Billikens have been able to escape with wins, but against the better teams in the league, they’ve fallen short. It happened against St. Joseph’s on Friday, against Dayton the week before and against George Washington the week before that, all games SLU managed to put itself in contention to win after falling behind yet still not getting it done.

This time, it was SLU falling behind Atlantic 10-leading George Mason by 10 points early in the second half, tying the game on a 3-pointer by Isaiah Swope with 1.7 seconds to go in regulation, but then bowing out in overtime, missing its first five shots and losing 76-74 at Chaifetz Arena.

It’s the kind of thing that builds optimism and frustration at the same time.

“We could have won those games,” said center Robbie Avila, who returned to form with 27 points and nine rebounds. “We shot ourselves in the foot early, and when we do that, it’s hard to come back, especially against the top teams of this league.”

At 7-5 in league play, SLU (14-11) is still in third place in the league but with three teams right behind it at 6-5, including its next opponent, Loyola Chicago. George Mason (20-5, 11-1) has won 10 straight.

“We just didn’t close it at the end there,” said Avila.

But while SLU coach Josh Schertz agreed that it has seemed to happen a lot and was shaking his head just thinking about it, he is, on this one, definitely a glass-half-full guy.

“When you have a loss like this, I can’t even describe how gut-wrenching it is,” he said. “That pain can, if you’re not a strong locker room, really take your season to a bad place because you can’t overcome it. It kind of drops you in a regression. But if you have a strong locker room, and you got strong competitive character, that pain can really be fueled into growth. I believe 100% that we’re in that latter group.

“We didn’t play out of our minds tonight. There was nothing incredible about us. We competed; we were physical. I thought our energy was great. Our effort was great. We fought as hard as we could. We gave everything we had in the game. We didn’t make 18 3s or nobody went crazy. ... And we had every chance to win that game. Hopefully, there’s a tremendous confidence that, as we get to these last six games, man, let’s lock in. Let’s try to continue to get better. ... If VCU and George Mason are the class of the league, I don’t think we’re far away. If we’re a cut below, it’s not far. And I think we have a lot of room for growth. I don’t think we’re near our ceiling as a basketball team.”

A lot of things went well for SLU in this one. In addition to Avila’s return, Kalu Anya had 15 rebounds. SLU held George Mason to 38.2% from the field and had as many offensive rebounds (11) as George Mason had, only the second time in league play it hadn’t been beaten in that category. Gibson Jimerson, who missed most of the second half on Friday with a twisted ankle, played all 45 minutes.

The biggest impact was the play of Avila, who had been in single digits in scoring his previous three games. He started by missing four 3-pointers, running his streak to 0 for 11, before finding his touch inside and out.

“I started the game off but kind of got into it and got into a groove,” he said. “I was building my confidence personally.”

But not everything is right. Jimerson played every minute, but he made just 2 of 11 3-point tries. Swope wasn’t much better on 3s, making 4 of 13, and he had four turnovers in the first eight minutes of the game. And in what may have been what doomed SLU, Mason guard Woody Newton made 8 of 12 3-pointers, including all five he took in the second half in just under six minutes.

“He wasn’t considered a danger,” Swope said, “but he ended up one.”

Schertz took the rap for that part.

“Coming into the game it, he’d only made 79 3s in his career in six years and had made nine in conference play,” Schertz said. “People say, ‘Well, they didn’t guard him.’ We weren’t not trying to guard him, but we were certainly living with space and contests and trying to take other stuff away. And so (the players) were just doing what they were told. So I own all that. That’s all 100% on me.”

SLU pulled even at 59-59 on a 3-point play by Jimerson with 4:23 to play but then went more than three minutes without scoring and fell behind by seven and looked doomed when Jimerson missed two at the line with 1:18 to play. But Anya got the rebound on the second and Swope hit a 3 to cut the lead to four. Two free throws by Jalen Haynes took the lead back to six with 46.1 seconds left, and after Swope missed a 3, Jimerson got the rebound and made one with 24 seconds to play. SLU forced a turnover on the inbound play to get the ball back, and Swope hit two free throws with 12.7 seconds left to cut the lead to one.

Jared Billups made both halves of a one-and-one with 10.4 seconds left, but George Mason didn’t foul and Swope hit his 3 with 1.7 seconds left. Mason’s desperation heave wasn’t close.

Neither team shot well in overtime, but Darius Maddox clanked in a 3 with 2:39 to go that put Mason up 3 and forced SLU to play catchup. SLU got the ball back with 37.9 seconds to play and still down three and had an ugly possession. SLU took too much time before it got off a shot, and then it was a bad one, a spinning 3-point try by Jimerson with 14 seconds left that wasn’t close. Mason made one of two free throws with 11.4 seconds to play, and that was enough.

“We were trying to do something,” Schertz said. “There was a little bit of a miscommunication, and that possession was the worst one because it’s 37 seconds left, you don’t need a 3 and we could take a 2 and set up our press and it’s fine. We would up taking a really hard shot that missed so that was not the game but close to the game. When you go that long and we wind up with a 180 spinning 3, that’s just not good. We’ve got to execute better, and I’ve got to put them in better spots.”

Avila made 6 of 7 shots, including 4 of 5 3-pointers, in the second half but didn’t take a shot in the overtime and went to the free-throw line once.