SLU 62, SIUC 59: Game One

The season is underway.  SLU coach Jim Crews planned on playing all 13 scholarship players, boldly shrugging all parallels to the Last Supper.  But before the game started.

Well, OK.  Injury aside, Grandy captained the Intro line and gave out some impressive handshake combinations and chest bumps, though it looked like the injury dampened his usual enthusiasm.

Lineups

In this space, we will try to get a sense of what Jim “Safecracker” Crews is feeling as he tumbles through all possible combinations.  Who is starting, who is finishing, and how the minutes are allocated should tell us what direction the team will head.

  • Starters: McBroom, Yacoubou, Roby, Lancona, Manning.
  • Second-half:  (same)
  • Crunch Time: McBroom, Yacoubou, Roby, Mike Crawford, Austin Gillmann

Miles Reynolds also logged some Crunch Time minutes.  All 12 available scholarship players saw action, nine scored and everyone played double-digit minutes except Reggie Agbeko, who just missed out with nine.  Interesting that starters Lancona and Manning played minor roles overall, with Crews going small for extended stretches.  Foul trouble was not an issue, but a couple of minor injuries surely messed up the planned rotation.

SLU Player Stats

(Definitions at the bottom of the post)

  •  Career game for McBroom, announcing himself as the primary ball-handler and shooter.  He was the best player on the floor.
  • Ash was tough on the boards and showed driving ability.   Very strong debut for the Villanova transfer.
  • Mike Crawford grabbed some of the minutes vacated by Lancona and Manning, and left his mark with a stat-stuffing performance capped by a clutch tying three.  Last year he was used sparingly to spell Jake Barnett, putting up a couple of threes and mostly staying out of the way.  In this game, he was stable and poised (though one of his turnovers caused my daughter to audibly retch) and looked ready for an expanded role.
  • Gillmann did a few things befitting a fledging Rob Loe, namely “being tall and thin” and “passing pretty well from the top of the arc” and “launching an occasional three”.  He found McBroom through traffic on the kickout for the winning three.
  • Davell Roby was limited by the injury (see below) and the referees.   Home cooking overall was quite delicious — SLU was in the double-bonus most of the game despite a mostly-perimeter attack — but Roby was not allowed to share in the buffet.  I am sure Rammer is in his corner.  He looks like an enthusiastic defender and a second ballhandler.  If we can sketch out McBroom as the designated Shooter, Ash is the designated Driver, I am guessing Roby is a guy who does a bit of both, while guarding the opponent’s best perimeter guy.
  • Yarbrough did a reasonable Glaze impression — 5 boards in 12 mins, hands somewhat honeybaked — and is one sturdy dude.  In fact, among Glaze, Yarbrough and Agbeko,  SLU’s football coach may have found his next all-conference Tight End.

Injuries

We mentioned Glaze’s shoulder above.  While there were certainly enough able bodies around last night, this three-point shooting SLU team will need Grandy’s pick-and-roll skills and kinetic abilities down low to make the geometry work over the long haul.

Roby had a rough night even beyond the unwanted whistles, getting raked across the cheek in the first half and returning with the giant band-aid from my grandma’s mirror cabinet under his left eye.

McBroom suffered a wrist injury on a pile up after grabbing a huge defensive rebound with 2:40 left, drawing yet another two-shot foul.  He winced noticeably and made only one of the free throws.  (McBroom went 7 of 10 overall on the night from the lin; great for most, but three misses usually constitutes a bad month for a 90% FT shooter.)  He somehow shrugged off the pain with 10 seconds and hit a clutch, step-back three pointer that broke the tie and won the game.   All the more impressive after this post-game news:

 

Summary

Contributions in a tight game from just about everyone — including the sold-out crowd — and a couple of big threes to tie, then win it.  The team was disjointed at times but fun to watch.   Time will tell whether a three-point win against SIUC proves cringe-worthy or something to crow about, but undefeated feels pretty good.  Onward!

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AdjGS:  variation on the Game Score metric created by John Hollinger, detailed here.  Hollinger’s original formula is Adjusted to reallocate the points in the game by ratio of the player’s overall impact.  Credit to the team at Rock M Nation for this improvement.