When St. Louis University embarked in late January on a string of seven games in 21 days, with the team being on the road for more than half of that time, coach Josh Schertz expected that those seven games would determine how his team’s season went.
Turns out the last game may play the biggest role of all.
SLU travels north to face Loyola Chicago at 6 p.m. Friday with a 2-4 record going into the final game. SLU (14-11, 7-5) comes into the game tied for third place in the Atlantic 10 with Dayton and has a half-game lead on two teams, one of them Loyola. If SLU loses Friday, it will drop out of the top four in the conference, and Loyola (15-9, 6-5) would have a leg up on the head-to-head tiebreaker.
The top four is a big deal because the teams that finish first through fourth in the A-10 go straight to the quarterfinals of the postseason tournament, earning a coveted double bye for the first two rounds. That's especially important for a team like SLU with a limited bench.
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“Every game in this league has been tough from top to bottom,†point guard Isaiah Swope said. “We know where we're at. We know other teams are trying to climb to the top. So we just got to be better. Learn from it. Don't hang our head too much, because games are still going to be tough down the stretch.â€
“I mean, they're all huge,†said Schertz. “This stretch was going to be massive. We knew coming out of La Salle, seven games in 21 days, and the amount of travel we had to undertake and the level of (opponents). I think when we were underdogs in all seven games because of where they were played or who we were playing. If you looked at that stretch from an analytics standpoint — I don't look at us ever as underdogs in any game — but that was what it was. We knew it was going to be a tough stretch. We obviously know we're 7-5, we're four games back (of first place), we're not playing for a regular-season championship. We would love to, obviously, work to get the double bye.
“But even more important than the double bye to me is, are we playing our best basketball? Are we able to get to our ceiling between now and the end of the regular season? Do we look like the team we're capable of when March hits? Do we take (the George Mason) game and build on this? Because if we build on it and we're able to play with a level of physicality and energy and toughness we showed and then we add in a little bit more of the intelligence to it, the discipline, now we're a team. There should be no question that if VCU and George Mason are the two best teams in the league, it'd be hard to say we can't play with them, that that's a level too far for us. Whatever the chasm is, it's not that big.â€
SLU is first in the Atlantic 10 in effective field goal percentage and first in effective field goal defense, according to , which should be the kind of thing that puts a team in first place, but SLU is also first in percentage of possessions that end with turnovers and last in causing those turnovers when the opponent has the ball. That creates a situation where in A-10 play opponents have taken 135 more shots than SLU, a situation that, as Schertz has said, is unsustainable.
One thing Schertz comes back to is that his top three players — Swope, Robbie Avila and Gibson Jimerson — have not been at their best at the same time, but watch out if they do. Avila struggled for two weeks before breaking out Tuesday. Swope seldom practices because of a sore knee, and his shooting percentage, which was once 43.8, is down to 36.3, while his turnovers are up, even at a time when Schertz has had Kobe Johnson bringing the ball upcourt at times to ease some of the pressure on Swope. Jimerson, a career 38.8% shooter on 3-pointers, is at 29.4 this season, better only than Kalu Anya among SLU’s starters. All three are shooting below their career marks on 3-pointers, and Schertz is counting on that coming around at some point.
One other thing SLU can use after this game: a breather. SLU doesn't have a midweek game next week, so it will be eight days after Loyola before SLU plays again, facing Rhode Island in a five-game run to the A-10 tournament. Schertz had his five starters play almost the entire second half against George Mason. Max Pikaar got 14 seconds late in the half to guard the inbounding passer, with Avila taking the bench, but other than that, the bench stayed on the bench. (“It felt like the game was in the balance the whole way,†Schertz said, “and that group had a pretty good rhythm.â€) The five starters all played at least 40 minutes in the game, with Jimerson, who had twisted his ankle in the game before, playing all 45.
“If anybody needs a rest, it's our guys,†Schertz said, “with what they've outputted here. We're exhausted, but they gotta dig in for one more on the road against a great team. And I know this: I don't know how we'll play, but I know we're going to fight. I know we're going to compete. I know that we're going to give it everything we have, and we'll fight like we did, from tip to buzzer.â€
“We're playing high minutes,†Avila said, “but I think it's a big mentality thing with this team. Everybody knows what it's going to take, and we have to play. Gib played 45 minutes on a purple ankle. If that's what it's going to take to go and try and win, we're all willing to do so. So we're tough guys. We're going to play long-minute games, and we're just going to come back and continue to build off of it.â€
