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WASHINGTON — As St. Louis University came down the stretch in the regular season, coach Josh Schertz stressed it wasn’t as important for his team to get the double bye and go straight to the quarterfinals of the Atlantic 10 tournament as it was for his team to be playing its best when it got to the tournament.

If SLU’s season had ended at halftime of its game with Dayton on March 4, that would have been the case: SLU had just beaten Loyola Chicago by 31 points and was up 13 on Dayton at halftime. But SLU had the rest of the Dayton game and a whole game with Duquesne still to play, and those last three halves weren’t quite as good. SLU lost to Dayton by eight points and ran into both a red-hot Duquesne team and its own ball-handling misfortunes and needed overtime to beat the Dukes.

Now, SLU goes into the conference tournament looking like, well, the way it has for much of the season: good, with just enough not-good to make things difficult.

“We played about 65 minutes of what hopefully our best looks like,� Schertz said of the Loyola and Dayton games. “That’s been a little bit of our issue, consistency. I don’t think it’s an issue of our best being good enough. It’s our floor being good enough and cutting down on some of the things we do on both ends of the floor that create scenarios where we’re having to rally back from six points, where we find ourselves normally down six with a minute to go. I told the guys today, I said, there’s actually things you can do, I know it sounds amazing, but you don’t have to be down six with a minute to go. You can actually maybe have a lead, and it’s a whole different thing. I think it’s more of the consistency piece.�

SLU (18-13, 11-7) will need that if it’s to get through the A-10 tournament with four wins in four days, its only path to the NCAA Tournament. SLU’s win over Duquesne gave the Billikens the No. 5 seed in A-10 tournament, which started Wednesday at Capital One Arena and will see SLU starting its play on around 1 p.m. central time Thursday for a game with Davidson (17-15, 6-12), which beat Richmond 69-65 on Wednesday. If SLU wins that one, it will face Loyola at 1 p.m. Friday.

There is a solid case to be made that SLU is much better off as the No. 5 seed than the No. 6 seed. SLU has beaten every team in its half of the bracket, including the two higher seeds, No. 4 Loyola and No. 1 Virginia Commonwealth, compared with going 0-3 against the higher seeds on the other half, No. 2 George Mason and No. 3 Dayton.

SLU’s shooting has been good — No. 1 in the conference in effective shooting rate at — but that’s counterbalanced by other factors. SLU’s opponents have taken about 200 more shots than SLU has, wiping out some of the advantage of SLU’s superior shooting by sheer volume. And the reason opponents are getting so many more shots is because SLU does not get many offensive rebounds compared with what they give up, and they turn the ball over at a high rate.

“The problem is we’re 15th in turnover rate (in the A-10),� Schertz said, “only because there’s not 16 teams and so our inability to handle the basketball and take care of it, not only does that compromise your offense, which we’re pretty good offensively, it really hurts your defense.�

“I think it starts with me, my personal self,� said center Robbie Avila, who had 10 turnovers on Saturday against Duquesne. “I think just being smarter with the ball, being stronger with the ball. I had a couple of ones that I let them tap my wrist and I’m losing the ball. I got to be able to play through those little ticky-tack things. And just team-wise, just being more purposeful. I think sometimes we throw passes that aren’t even there, or just do nothing for us. And we allow the other team to jump gaps and stuff like that. But I think it’s just starting with being strong with it.�

Fewer turnovers, especially the live-ball turnovers SLU is prone to that lead to transition baskets the other way, would make the defense look better.

“The only way you can win four games in four days is if your defense is good,� Avila said. “You’re probably not going to shoot 60% from the field, and 45% from 3 in four straight games. It’s really hard to do. And so I think if we want to be able to win all four of those games we have to pride ourselves on defense.�

SLU did close its season with wins in four of its final five games, including one over Davidson. But that was one of those games that required an amazing SLU comeback. The Billikens were down 13 with 6:31 to play before going on a 19-5 run to win 57-56, with Avila scoring the go-ahead basket with 4.6 seconds left and then Davidson missing an open 3 at the buzzer.

SLU followed that game with its romp over Loyola three days later.

“It was a gut-wrenching loss,� Davidson coach Matt McKillop said Wednesday. “They’re really good. For those first 34 minutes of basketball, our defense was exceptional. Those last six minutes, they go 8 for 9 and it’s not close to good enough. But they are an absolute handful. ... Our guys know we didn’t close out that game and we can very much be in position to win if we defend the way we did and we find ways to score the way we did today.�

Those final six minutes against Davidson were an example of how this season has gone for SLU. It shot 25% in the first half of the game, 59% in the second.

“I think toward the second half of the season overall, we’ve been closer to our peak and what we want to look like and be like as a team,� said guard Isaiah Swope. “Especially with our last win, it wasn’t overall how we wanted it to be. but at the same time I think it was a good foot forward for us just rolling into the A-10 tournament, knowing we got four games in four days.�