If a Double-Double Falls in the Forest
SLU beat Rockhurst 80-48 in a game that may or may not have actually happened. The game was considered an exhibition (by Rockhurst oddly enough). On KenPom.com the team stats count but the player stats do not. The RPI also says “keep it moving, nothing to see here”.
The game was part of the Jesuit Basketball Spotlight, which is a real thing. But Rockhurst (Division II) is not even a member of the Jesuit Basketball Conference (JesCon), which is a thing I made up. “People” numbering 5,290 attended something. Beverages may or may not have been served. Really strange.
Stu was there and saw some quality shuffling and flopping.
SLU has now taken six charges by my unofficial count and that is Jim Crews’ goal … or at least it was for Saturday’s game against Bradley.
— stu durando (@studurando) December 3, 2014
It’s 2014 and we still don’t have Charges Drawn and Fouls Drawn available, outside of poor Stu and his clicker. Somewhere, Cody Ellis is shaking his royal blue head sadly.
Lineups
In this space, we try to learn what SLU Coach “Safecracker” Jim Crews thinks of his team by the minutes he is dolling out, trying all possible combinations and listening for that click. Starting Is For High School (TM), but we look at starters vs minutes leaders anyway.
Starters:
- Austin McBroom
- Ash Yacoubou
- Marcus Bartley
- Reggie Agbeko
- Brett Jolly
Same starting five as last time out. Nothing new or remarkable.
Minutes Leaders (non-starters in Bold):
- Milik Yarbrough (26)
- Miles Reynolds (25)
- Yacoubou (22)
- tie – Davell Roby, Austin Gillmann, and McBroom (18)
Once again, twelve played. Not all twelve reached double-digit minutes; Lancona (8) and Manning (7) lagged. As in the Mississippi St game which we agreed never to talk about again, this game featured copious amounts of garbage time. So this distribution could either mean A Return to Tinkering With Twelve, or maybe just I Was Going to Play Nine But It Got Out of Hand.
Either way, we are still rocking the #2 spot in Bench Minutes (47.5%), trailing only the #1 Kentucky Juggercats (a nearly perfectly weird 49.0%).
SLU Player Stats
(Definitions at bottom of post)
- Ash Yacoubou logged the first double-double of the year (15 pts, 10 reb)
- Reynolds and Yarbrough still out-produced him by the AdjGS measure. Well done by Freshmen both slim and stout.
- Of the big guys, it is looking like Gillmann may be the only one with three-point making range. We will remember Rob Loe as long range bombing big man, but he shot only 31% from three his last two years, and 33% for his career. Gillmann so far is 3-5 and looks like those numbers are within reach.
- Only two detractors with negative AdjGS — Manning and Jolly — and 21 total minutes of backslide. The TAMU-CC game also featured only two players with negative AdjGS, but the covered a fateful 38 player-minutes.
Summary
The SLU Billikens played one exhibition game before the season at home against SIU-E, then snuck in a rumored win in a secret scrimmage at Memphis, who may be falling apart completely. This Rockhurst game served as yet a third flavor of practice game, allowing everyone to run around loosey goosey and clear their heads going into the biggest challenge of the season. Saturday at #8 Wichita St.
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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.