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Unknowingly, there’s been a race going on for the St. Louis University men’s basketball team: Can it get to the end of its run of six games in 17 days before it runs out of healthy players?

It only seems like every day a new Billiken gets hurt. Eight games into its season, SLU has only four players who have appeared in every game, and one of them barely has been able to play in the second half of three games because of severe cramps. Two SLU players, Gibson Jimerson and Isaiah Swope, are in the top 25 of percentage of team minutes played at because coach Josh Schertz has had no choice but to keep them in the game. Jimerson has played 93.9% of SLU’s minutes this season.

When the Billikens (5-3) faces Chicago State (0-10) at 2 p.m. Sunday at Chaifetz Arena, they will be without forward AJ Casey and guard Larry Hughes II, in addition to guard Josiah Dotzler, who is out for the season because of torn knee ligaments. On Saturday, guard Kobe Johnson was sick and didn’t practice, making him questionable for Sunday. And guard Kellen Thames continues to battle his cramping issue that has forced him to miss all or most of the second half in three of SLU’s past four games. If Johnson can’t go, SLU would have eight healthy players, one of whose ability to play a full game is in question.

“I’ve coached 27 years,� Schertz said Saturday. “I’ve been head coach 17, assistant 10. I’ve never seen anything close to this in terms of the amount, just the deluge, of constant injuries and illnesses and just weird circumstances that seem to just rear their heads. To say that it’s not frustrating or feel like there’s a black cloud would not be an accurate statement. But I also think, as a coach, your responsibilities are pretty simple, and that’s to make sure that the sum is greater than the individual parts from your team, and that you’re maximizing the personnel you have available. And if we have six guys available, then it’s my job to maximize the six or eight or seven or nine or 10 or whatever the number is. It’s my job to try to maximize that personnel and to put those guys in positions to be successful.�

But that hasn’t been easy to do when practices have walk-ons or assistant coaches taking part because the team doesn’t have 10 healthy scholarship players. The Billikens went into the season having had two practices with a full complement of players since Schertz took over, and nothing that has happened in season has changed that.

The most baffling aspect of that has been Thames, who in the first four games of the season had no problems playing 30 minutes a night, but since then has cramped so severely in games he’s required IV fluids.

“I think they’re working with doctors from endocrinologist to rheumatologists to pulmonologists,� Schertz said. “No one has said he needs to shut down. They don’t think it’s a danger to his health. We just don’t know the cause, so we don’t have a solution. In three of the last four games, he’s obviously been unable to finish them. The one game he did finish was Jackson State, and what was the difference in that scenario? He played similar minutes, but he was able to finish the game. … Before the last game they really monitored his hydration and caloric intake. They said he crushed it in those capacities in terms of what the intake was. And then the second play of the second half, he gets a layup, and then he just started with the cramps, so obviously your heart breaks for him because you know how much he wants to play. He loves it. But until we get some sort of understanding of what exactly we’re dealing with, we can’t get a solution. You can’t solve a problem if you don’t know what the problem is.�

Schertz said he thinks that with a week off for finals after the Chicago State game, Hughes, who bruised his back and tailbone on a fall in practice, could be back by the Illinois State game. But Casey, a 6-foot-9 transfer from Miami who hasn’t played since the second game of the season because of an ankle injury, has made no progress toward returning to play.

But there’s more than that, because even the healthy players aren’t at the top of their game. Star center/playmaker Robbie Avila has been back for the past four games but still hasn’t shaken off the accumulated rust that comes with all the time he has missed because of two ankle sprains. His 17 turnovers in five games are more than a quarter of the total he had all of last season. His percentage on two-point shots, .575, is the lowest of his career.

“He’s rusty,� Schertz said. “That’s part of missing 60 days of practice. … He’s not been himself. I certainly don’t want to put anything at his feet, because we probably don’t (beat) UMass Lowell or Jackson State without his performances. So it’s not like him being back is not a great thing for us. But in terms of his standard and what he can play to, he’s capable of playing much better than what he’s playing. And again, it’s just part of the process for him of kind of getting back to playing basketball. He’s come back in a time where we’re playing a lot of games. There’s a little bit of practice.�