(9) Saint Louis (45%) vs (8) Georgia – 8:45 PM CDT
What’s a Billiken?
It’s an Atlantic-10 regular season co-champion, sharing the title with VCU and earning the top A10 Tourney seed by virture of head-to-head wins.
It’s a balanced team, ranking #2 in both Offensive Effective FG % and Defensive Effective FG %, per KenPom.
It’s a teetering team who led the country in both of the above Eff FG % categories most of December & January & February, but faded hard down the stretch. They started a scorching 24-1 and finished a tepid 4-4.
It’s an analytical team, conforming to the new wisdom of shot selection, prioritizing three-pointers and shots at the rim. KenPom introduced a new metric this year Average 2-Point Attempt Distance and the Bills are #1 in the country in it.
It’s a weird team, Part 1: Robbie Avila. An unorthodox star, he’s on a team that loves to run but he’s quite slow. He’s on a team featuring rangy wings but he’s a lumbering 6’10” center. By his assist rate (26%) and three point shooting numbers (40.6%) you’d think he was a nimble 5’10” guard.
It’s a weird team, Part 2: the point guards aren’t really point guards. Trey Green, Quentin Jones & Dion Brown all profile like PGs, but the Billikens top assist men are Avila and the aforementioned rangy wings Kellen Thames & Amari McCottry. Couple that with the fact Thames (65%) & McCottry (58%) are woeful Free Throw shooters, and it’s fair to say that SLU has no point guards at all.
It’s a weird team, Part 3: Brown at 6’3″ is a terrific post player and defensive rebounder, while Avila tends to stay around the arc on offense.
From the above, you’d guess Avila will be the best player in this game. But we at WAB HQ take notice when players rate higher in Game Score than NBAers like Anthony Edwards & Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. So from the below, the inside-outside Bulldogs sophomore duo Jeremiah Wilkinson & Somto Cyril may make a compelling case. Wilkinson started most of the year before yielding his spot to Marcus Millender, but have no fear. Georgia goes 10 or 11 deep every game and their sixth man often plays 25+ minutes. Cyril is a 6’11” shot blocker and offensive rebounder, and it #4 in the country in 2-Point FG %. Look for putbacks and alley oop dunks from Cyril all night.
Bottom line: SLU’s three-point shooting can heat up to the point where not much else matters, and if two of Avila, Green, Brady Dunlap & Ishan Sharma heat up the Bills will not be shy about feeding that machine. But that shooting has cooled off quite a bit of late, and Cyril is a top rim defender. Georgia’s defense is easily the worst of the four units in this game, but the one thing they do well is block shots (#10 in the country) so if the long bombs aren’t falling and the lid is on the rim from in close….
Let’s set as our bellwether stat SLU steals vs Georgia blocks and see if that proves decisive.
GO BILLIKENS!
Data courtesy Kenpom.com and Basketball Reference
Game Score metric created by John Hollinger detailed here
Plot format by Aaron Baggett
Inspiration from Ken Pomeroy
Inspiration from Rock M Nation
Team colors courtesy:Benjamin S. Baumer and Gregory J. Matthews (2020). teamcolors: Color Palettes for Pro Sports Teams. R package version 0.0.4
