Gordo: Strong A-10 opener reminds Billikens they can still make some noise

SLU staggered into Atlantic 10 play with a depleted roster and a disappointing 7-6 nonconference mark.

The Billikens came out of their league opener standing taller. They routed Fordham 88-63 Tuesday afternoon in New York City, starting fast and maintaining control all the way to the end.

That victory reinforced coach Josh Schertz’s belief that this team still has more to give, despite everything that has gone wrong.

Hope is not lost.

The Billikens face essentially the same challenge as they would if they brought a 12-1 or 11-2 record into league play.

They must reach peak form leading up to March to earn a good A-10 tournament seed. Then they must take their shot at winning the event and the NCAA Tournament berth that comes with it.

History tells SLU fans this can happen. And this was always going to be the team’s primary goal regardless of what happened during their first 13 games.

Earning an at-large NCAA Tournament berth out of the mid-major A-10 has become nearly impossible. The Southeastern Conference, Big Ten+Eight, Atlantic Bi-Coastal Conference and the Big 12+4 will hog most of them.

To beat these long odds to reach the bracket, an A-10 program must build a difficult nonconference schedule — no easy task, as power conference schools prefer to buy easy victories — then earn quality victories before excelling in league play.

A-10 power Dayton answered the first part of that challenge by earning victories over highly ranked UConn and Marquette. It also built strong metrics with narrow losses to highly ranked North Carolina, Iowa State and Cincinnati.

Like their other A-10 peers, Billikens scheduled a soft schedule that offered little value in building their NET and KenPom numbers. Then they lost a half-dozen times, including a home game to Wofford, to further damage their profile.

Schertz hoped to engineer a flying start to his SLU tenure by bringing play-making center Robbie Avila and dynamic guard Isaiah Swope with him from Indiana State and keeping holdover guards Gibson Jimerson, Kellen Thames and Larry Hughes II in the fold.

Instead, he has faced the sort of compounding adversity that plagued predecessor Travis Ford: injuries, illness and in-season roster attrition.

Schertz’s offense runs through Avila, who missed three games and several weeks of practice time with his ankle injury. Kobe Johnson suffered the same fate due to a shoulder injury.

Hughes left the program, subtracting some offense, and guard Josiah Dotzler suffered a season-ending knee injury, subtracting some depth.

Thames has been hobbled by chronic cramping and a hip flexor injury. Forward AJ Casey has been limited to three games, and Dylan Warlick is still getting up to speed after (mostly) recovering from hip surgery and canceling his plans to redshirt.

That explains the 7-6 start.

Now, Schertz and his staff must spend the next two months building up the Billikens. Winning big at Fordham proved the team has a strong foundation with Jimerson, Avila and Swope.

Jimerson scored a career-high 33 points and made it look easy. He came out knocking down 3-points, which set up his drives to the basket and his off-ball cuts for layups.

Avila hit a couple of 3-point shots from atop the key, drive the basket like a guard and surgically dissected the Rams with pinpoint passes. And when the Billikens needed a boost to finish off the victory, Swope created shots for himself off the dribble.

When these three operate as efficient as they did for most of the game at Fordham, they can carve up opponents.

Ah, but where else can the Billikens get points? Physical Kalu Anya would be a nice low-post complement to Avila if he could make free throws.

But he can’t. Anya is just the latest SLU big man who invites deliberate fouling around the rim. This is an issue the Billikens can’t fix during the next two months.

Schertz likes Max Pikaar’s upside at a 6-foot-11 player with guard skills. His wiry frame is far from ready for a heavy Division I workload, but his length is an asset at both ends of the court.

He can convert lob passes into dunks, as Fordham saw.

Perhaps Johnson could bolster the offense now that he is healthier. He was quiet at Fordham, but he scored 23 points combined in the losses at Grand Canyon and to Wofford while hitting 5 of 8 shots from 3-point range and 9 of 15 shots overall.

If Thames can stay healthy enough to contribute, that would help immensely. He reminded us that while beating Fordham’s last-gasp pressure against the SLU subs in the waning moments Tuesday.

Freshman Amari McCottry is built like a Division I-ready guard, but his game is still catching up to the college speed. Maybe he can make incremental progress.

And as Schertz underscored ahead of the Fordham game, the biggest challenge for the surviving players is to toughen up defensively and get stops with the game on the line.

This is where the Billikens can make the most progress between now and March. That won’t be easy, but this team still has time — and Tuesday’s showing showed it still has a chance.