Popular Post Matty Light Posted March 3, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted March 3, 2021 The hallmark of Travis Ford's teams at SLU have been its toughness and its relentlessness. His teams have never quit on him. They have dealt with so many obstacles and still manage to keep improving throughout the season. It would have been easy to be bearish on the Billikens NCAA Tourney chances after the abysmal showing at Dayton. We got punched in the face and had no idea how to respond. It happens. Sometimes teams leave a turd in the punch bowl. Tom Brady and the Buccaneers lost to Nick Foles and the Bears this year. happens. But I was not about to count this team out. It is easy to discount what COVID did to this team since the whole country has been dealing with the outbreak too, but going over a month without games or even practice has a huge impact on teams that need to adapt to each other and learn how to serve the best role for the team when on the court. In addition to the COVID-related issues, the team has had to deal with Yuri's ankle injury, Hasahn's concussion and integrate Martin Linssen into the team. The Bills also have had to reintroduce Gibson Jimmerson and Fred Thatch and get them up to game speed after losing both for the season a year ago. Normally, we would have played almost 30 games at this point in the season. After only 18 games, the regular season is over. Do the Billikens have time to take their game up another level? YES! I believe wholeheartedly that they can. Last year's team, in addition to losing Thatch and Gibby, had to integrate Ty Weaver and Javonte Perkins into the team. This took quite some time to finally click. We had 3 new freshmen getting big minutes in Collins, Hargrove, and Bell. Big Dance dreams looked bleak for our squad until we finally hit our stride in game 27. That was the night Perkins went off for 25 in a solid beating of VCU at home. Coming off a heartbreaking loss @ UMass, this sparked a new playing level for the Bills who ended up starting a streak of 5 wins by double digits before COVID shut down the season. Who didn't want to bet on the Bills to end that season? In the 2018-2019 season, it was game 29 when the team gelled together. A crazy fall semester saw Jacobs and Thatch come aboard as Freshmen. Along with them came Carte'are Gordon and Ingvi Gudmunssun. SLU also brought on Tremaine Isabell and Dion Wiley as grad transfers and they arrived very late in the summer. After a promising start to the season, by January Gordon and Ingvi had left school and the Billikens were struggling to win. With just 3 games left in the regular season SLU looked out of time to find the right cohesion. The night of SLU's 29th game we handled George Mason by ten, with Goodwin scoring 24, Isabel 17, and Bess 17. The offense finally clicked to where our 3 best scorers were finding their shots. Each guy had at least 4 assists. We went on to go 6-1 the rest of the way and win the A-10 tournament. Is 18 games enough this year to allow the team to gel with all that's happened? We only need to look back 3 years ago to find that precedent. The Billikens, with their season seemingly derailed by Situation II brought freshmen Jordan Goodwin & Hasahn French into the fold. Transfers Javon Bess and DJ Foreman would be playing in their first games for SLU after sitting out a season. Rashed Anthony came on as a grad transfer. The season was a struggle to mesh all the new players together with Roby, Hines, and Johnson. But it only took until game 19 for those Billikens to gel. And the game quickly became part of Billikens lore. That is the game Jordan Goodwin took over. THE TRIPLE DOUBLE GAME! The struggling BIllikens came into the game 8-10 as Mike Lewis II came back home with his Dukes in tow. Jordan finished the game with 13 pts, 15 rebounds, 10 assists, and 4 steals. This would start a stretch of 8 games where the Billikens only losses were in OT to VCU (I believe this was the Free Throw game) and a thrashing at St. Bonaventure (the bus didn't get stolen this time!). Goodwin missed the remaining games serving suspension, but SLU did not quit on Ford and finished a respectable 3-4 without Jordan. TL;DR There is good reason to be optimistic about the Billikens discovering a higher level of basketball within themselves at this point in the season. With injuries, new personnel, and off-court issues it takes scores of hours of basketball to get everything to mesh correctly. Ford's Billikens seem to find this point between games 18 and 30. We are finally hitting that stretch of games where this becomes possible. I know how relentless these guys are and that there are no obstacles they will not fight to overcome. The team has my full confidence. Let's go win the A-10 Tournament! BuiltFordBills, Box and Won, billikenbill and 7 others like this Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billikenbill Posted March 3, 2021 Share Posted March 3, 2021 That’s an excellent post. Thought I was reading something on Mid-major Madness before double checking that I was still on the board. Submit that somewhere. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matty Light Posted March 3, 2021 Author Share Posted March 3, 2021 It seems like a disappointment that this team did not reach the level we expected coming into the season, but I love how we are trending. French looks like he is back to the player we know and love, Hargrove is brimming with confidence, and Fred Thatch is back to form. To think that this time last year we didn't know if Fred would ever play again. Pray that Collins, Perkins, and Jacobs get healed up this week. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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