Nonconference play showed SLU where it needs to improve as A-10 season starts Tuesday

The nonconference portion of St. Louis University’s basketball schedule may not have looked the most productive. The Billikens went 7-6 with a constantly changing lineup thanks to injuries and a departure. SLU went winless in its three road games and both of its neutral-site games. Only two players appeared in all 13 games.

Coach Josh Schertz knows one thing he has.

“We have truth,” he said.

The first 13 games certainly did nothing to create undue expectations for the Billikens, and more than anything, it kept a tight lid on them. SLU was picked to finish fourth in the Atlantic 10 Conference in the preseason poll of coaches and media, and few would expect that now as SLU opens its A-10 season on Tuesday at Fordham in a 1 p.m. game.

“I think sometimes you can schedule in a way that you have no truth,” Schertz said. “Maybe we could schedule where we’d be 11-2 right now, or 12-1, but we wouldn’t have been exposed. All our weaknesses have been exposed. We know who we are, and we know where we got to get better.

“I think you leave the nonconference saying we understand who we are and we understand where we got to grow and where we got to improve to win games in this league. I also think we have a better idea of our identity, what our identity is going to be and what it needs to do and what the formula is for this team to be successful.”

“It hasn’t been the most ideal start,” said sixth-year senior Gibson Jimerson, who along with forward Kalu Anya are the only players to see action in every game so far, “but 90% of teams never have an ideal start. I think the biggest thing for us is practicing and being consistent every day in practice, which will translate into the games. It’s hard to kind of turn it on in games, and I think our practices have been a lot better of late, competing, the energy has been really good. We’ve had more guys, so that’s helped. ... Just hoping to see that translate into the A-10 schedule.”

Schertz has been critical of his team’s effort at points in the season, but he has liked how the team has looked in its past two games, a loss at Grand Canyon and a win against NAIA school William Woods. And that increased effort is one of the things he thinks the team needs most.

“I think we have made improvements,” he said. “Do I think we’re physical? No. Do I think we’re better than we were three or four games ago? Yes. Do we have a lot of room to grow and get better? For sure. No question about that. The league is going to drive that because the reality is in this league, if you don’t compete your brains out and play with great physicality, you got no chance to win games. Like, those are two non-negotiables. ... If we’re not ready to go from the jump ball at 2 p.m. (Eastern) on the 31st, you’re going to get your feelings hurt.”

“It’s a super-physical league,” said center Robbie Avila. “Everybody has their bigs. Guys are bigger than what I played in the (Missouri Valley Conference). And so it’s going to be exciting.”

That need for physicality is evident in some of the ways Schertz sees the team needing to be better.

“We have to get stops,” he said. “We have to be locked down defensively. I hope our free-throw shooting improves so at least people stop emailing me about it, and tell me to work on free throws, which I hadn’t thought of until they mentioned it, which I appreciate the advice.

“I think this team’s identity is going to be tied up in its ability to be tough together, physical, guard, we’re going to have to be able to string together stops, do tough things, do hard things together. And as we do that, that’s how you become a team. You become a team by doing hard things together, going through tough things together.

“We’ve gotten beat. We’ve gotten scarred up a little bit. We’ve got roughed up a little bit. So I think we know who we are, and I think we know where we got to get better. And so I think the schedule prepared us, did exactly what — outside of us not winning enough games — it did exactly what we wanted it to do.”

SLU’s free-throw shooting problems are clearly a concern. They make it tough to protect leads, tough to catch up. The numbers would look better if Jimerson, Isaiah Swope and Avila can get to the line more and Anya gets to the line less. Avila is a career 76% shooter who’s currently at 67%. Anya is a career 49% shooter who is currently at 36%, so while there’s room for improvement, those numbers for Anya are unlikely to ever be great.

But the biggest challenge for SLU might be out of anyone’s control. SLU has yet to play a game this season with everyone healthy, and even when you acknowledge the fact that Josiah Dotzler is out for the season and Larry Hughes II has left the program, getting everyone healthy at the same time is no given, especially with the specter of Kellen Thames’ cramping looming and Swope playing through pain in his surgically repaired knee. Both are considered questionable for the Fordham game, with Swope being more likely to play.

“I just wish we were 13-0 instead of 7-6,” Schertz said “and once we get our guys back, I think we got a chance. I think that’ll happen at some point; at some point we’re going to have our whole team. I can’t tell you when, but when we do, I think you add (Thames) to the mix and Isaiah gets back healthy, with the development of these young guys and they’ve gotten this opportunity, I think we have to chance to be a good team, as long as we continue to work and build those habits that we need from a competitive standpoint and from a physicality standpoint.”