SLU starts A-10 play ?in pretty good shape?

[IE]

A year ago, St. Louis U. went into the Atlantic 10 season at 12-2 and with expectations high for it to reach the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2000.

This year, SLU goes into conference play at 11-3 and with expectations high for another trip to the NCAA Tournament.

It would be easy to say not much has changed between the seasons as SLU begins league play tonight against UMass at Chaifetz Arena, but, as everyone knows, so much has. Coach Rick Majerus, the architect of last season?s team, took a medical leave and later died Dec. 1. Brian Conklin, the motivational and at times physical leader, has graduated. And SLU put together most of that 11-3 record without the help of point guard Kwamain Mitchell, who missed the first 11 games with a broken bone in his foot and is just starting to get his game back together.

?I think the guys have done a remarkable job,? interim coach Jim Crews said. ?There have been a lot of different adversities throughout the season which are well documented and they kept doing the next right thing. That?s a good thing. I?ve been very, very fortunate and impressed with how they?ve handled a tough, tough situation throughout the season.?

The tough situations the Billikens are likely to face now come in the form of the other teams in the Atlantic 10 Conference, which offers a wide-open race for the league title, with four teams, SLU, Virginia Commonwealth, Butler and Temple, considered the favorites. (UMass coach Derek Kellogg feels SLU is a top 25, 30 team.)

But beneath those four is another level of teams that figure to cause problems every time out. Nine of the 16 teams in the league had double-digit wins in nonconference play. Four teams went into league play with winning streaks of at least seven games, including an eight-game streak for SLU. A win tonight over UMass (10-3 with a seven-game streak) would give the Billikens their longest winning streak since 1993-94.

?I think we?ve set ourselves up in pretty good shape to be successful,? forward Dwayne Evans said. ?Obviously we know how tough conference will be and we?ll have to pull out hard-fought wins. But I think we got it done in nonconference. We had a couple glitches here and there but we?re set up to do well in our upcoming games.?

?We started out struggling,? Crews said, ?but the Santa Clara game was the only one that wasn?t good, period. In the other games, both wins and losses, we did a lot of good things. I like our progress. But that?s over. We?re in conference, and that?s exciting. It?s very challenging. Now teams know each other much better, the players know each other much better. In nonconference, there?s no championship. Now we?re playing for a championship. Each game presents itself as 1/16th of a championship. That makes it fun. Competition is fun. The A-10 has got good competition and you?ve got to earn things. The more you can earn, the better your confidence gets. But it?s tough to earn it.?

SLU has certainly got its confidence going in the winning streak, serving up a tough defense ? Kenpom.com ranks SLU 28th in the nation in defensive efficiency ? that has fed a solid offense. Mitchell?s absence allowed Mike McCall to carve out his place, and he?s shooting 50.9 percent on 3-pointers, the second-best mark in the league. Forward Cory Remekun, meanwhile, has made 67.3 percent of his shots, the best mark in the league. And forward Cody Ellis is second in the league in free throw shooting at 90.4 percent.

There are still a few glitches to sort out. Mitchell is still getting back in the swing of things after his layoff and hasn?t found his shot. He?s shooting 25 percent from the field and has made just one of 11 3-pointers. ?I don?t think he?s all the way back in terms of just being playing at the level he?s used to playing at,? Crews said. ?He?s not close to that. He?s on the right path.?

Forward Rob Loe, who came into the season as a 45 percent 3-point shooter, is at 24.3 percent and has made just one of his past 14 attempts going back over a month. At the same time, efforts to have him play more in the low post haven?t worked well, either. ?I think he?s doing better? in the low post, Crews said. ?I think it?s a good character thing for Rob, or anybody. He?s putting in the work and not getting results, but he?s staying with it. He keeps doing the next right thing. It will come around. He?s thinking right.?

The reassuring thing for Crews and SLU is that Mitchell and Loe have both hit shots before. They?re proven commodities. For all the change, the team is loaded with known commodities.

?It?s a little bit like getting four kids in a car to go to the movie,? Crews said. ?Try to corral all that. Having 12 guys playing great at the same level doesn?t happen too often. What?s good is, one guy not quite, another guy is picking it up. I think that?s been a strength of our team the past couple years.?

And it?s time for the curtain to go up.

 

[IE]

UMass gets set for stifling Saint Louis defense in Atlantic 10 opener




Rick Majerus is gone, but his defense is still present in Chaifetz Arena.

Majerus, the coach who built the Saint Louis University Billikens into a dogged group of man-to-man defenders, stepped away as coach on Aug. 24 because of heart problems
and died on Dec. 1.

His team hasn?t lost its ability to frustrate stymie opposing offenses with his signature style of hard-nosed defense.

That?s what the University of Massachusetts basketball team will have to contend with when it opens conference play Thursday night on the road.

The Billikens enter Thursday allowing a league-best (and 10th nationally) 55.0 points per game, and have clamped down even harder during their current eight-game winning streak, which has seen them hold opponents under 50 points four times.

?They may be one of the top teams in the country playing the way they want to play,? said UMass coach Derek Kellogg. ?They?re so good defensively man-to-man.?

While the Saint Louis goal is to slow the game down, it?s widely known that the Minutemen, who are on a seven-game winning streak of their own, like to play fast, making tempo a key factor in Thursday?s matchup.

?We?re going to try to get the game up and down,? Kellogg said. ?We?ve got to be smart; you don?t want to try to force tempo just to say you?re doing it .?.?. Don?t just throw the ball at the rim to say you?re getting a shot up quickly.?

Point guard Chaz Williams said he wasn?t worried about the Billikins? staunch defense.

?It?s not really about them slowing us down,? Williams said. ?I feel like I can get anywhere on the floor I want to get whenever I want to get there.?

Last season, the Minutemen were the ones who played the lockdown defense, holding Saint Louis to 59 points in a victory on Jan. 28, 2012 at the Mullins Center.

?It was one of those days in college basketball where they?re on the road, we got a great crowd, we played well, and they didn?t make shots,? Kellogg said of last year?s game. ?That can happen on occasion. We were fortunate that it happened on a day when we were at home.?

Saint Louis will be boosted by preseason first-team all-conference point guard Kwamain Mitchell, who missed the season?s first 11 games with a fractured left foot, which actually helped the Billikens improve, said coach Jim Crews.

?Big picture, it?s been very positive,? Crews said. ?Particularly for our perimeter guys. I think they all got better.?

Now with Mitchell back in the lineup, Kellogg said Saint Louis is a top-flight opponent.

?It elevates them from a very, very good team to being close to a great team,? Kellogg said. ?He?s a guy that can take the game over on both ends of the floor.?

UMass has had its own health issues this week as Sampson Carter missed practice Monday and Tuesday with a sore hip ? the same one that cost him most of last season ? but Carter was on the floor at Chaifetz Arena on Wednesday, and expects to start Thursday.

?The start of conference play is something big,? Carter said. ?Nothing will stop me from playing.?

 

[IE]

Jury still out on UMass basketball as Atlantic 10 play begins




On the surface, 13 games ? 44.8 percent of the season ? seems like it should be enough of a sample size to make some determinations.

I want to be able to say, ?Yes, this is for sure a tournament team. They have one of the best point guards in the league, they?re 10-3 despite shooting significantly worse than they did last year and their inside game is only going to get better as they learn how to use Cady Lalanne.?

Or I want to be able to say, ?This team is incredibly flawed. They played way over their heads at the end of last year, none of their shooters are consistent enough and they appear to be lost tourists in the half-court offense.?

I can?t say either of those things. On the eve of Atlantic 10 play, I don?t feel any more ready to make a judgment on this team than I did at 9:59 a.m. on Nov. 13.

Other people have made determinations.

ESPN?s Eamonn Brennan says the Minutemen are no better than tenth out of 16 teams in the Atlantic 10. The argument is that UMass has gotten lucky. That the skin-of-the-teeth victories over low-level competition are unsustainable. That when, as Derek Kellogg called it Saturday, ?the gauntlet of Atlantic 10 play? begins, the Minutemen will be exposed for what they really are ? frauds.

I don?t blame Brennan. It?s a completely reasonable argument to make. The Minutemen are 10-3 despite having scored just eight more points than its opponents this season. They started the season with two buzzer-beating wins. They trailed at the final media timeout in their first seven games. In the eighth, they were leading but ended up needing overtime against a team from the Southern Conference.

Both Miami (Ohio) and Northern Illinois, MAC cellar dwellers, had the ball and a chance to take the lead with less than a minute to go.

UMass is 0-3 against BCS-conference opponents, and has looked overmatched one way or another in all three of those games ? one of which was at home.

Brennan, and others, say UMass has gotten lucky, and as the competitions stiffens, that luck is going to run out. Efficiency statistics, advanced metrics ? heck, any kind of metric ? back this argument up.

But the numbers haven?t seen the games. The numbers don?t see the confidence the Minutemen have in the final minute of a game when Chaz Williams and Co. calmly take care of business, time after time.

The hardcore numbers people will tell you otherwise, but eventually that starts to mean something. They?ll say there is no such thing as clutch, and that for the past two months, UMass basketball has been in a dry brush pile playing with a Zippo.

Maybe they?re right. Maybe UMass is nothing more than lucky, will go 8-8 or worse in a loaded Atlantic 10, and make a return trip to the NIT.

But what if they?re wrong? We?ve seen this movie before, especially in football. A somewhat talented team gets tested early in a few close games, and for the rest of the year, is so convinced that it?s going to win those close games, that it just starts happening even when it shouldn?t by any sort of conventional wisdom.

Call it the carry-over confidence theory.

Being around this team every day, I can be talked into buying this. Its theme is brotherhood. The chemistry off the court is palpable. These players like each other, and they like Kellogg.

Say what you want about his recruiting, his rotation or how he deals with the referees, but there can be no question that Kellogg has the mentality of this team exactly where he wants it.

They are tough. They play hard. They aren?t afraid of anyone.

Maybe instead of frauds, the Minutemen are fighters. There are no stats for swagger, and no column in the box score labeled ?brotherhood.?

I?m not arrogant enough to tell the numbers people to take their computers elsewhere. The numbers have a place in this discussion.

So do the intangibles, though.

Right now, those sides are at odds. We?ll find out soon enough who is right. Kellogg?s ?gauntlet? begins Thursday night at Saint Louis where UMass has never won.

They could be frauds. They could be fighters.