SLU secured the Essai You Championship of 2014-15 with a 67-61 win over SIUE at Chaifetz Arena. The Billikens moved to 6-4 in this season of discovery.
Lineups
Starters:
- Austin McBroom
- Ash Yacoubou
- Davell Roby
- Malik Yarbrough
- John Manning
Yarbrough had to craft up an intro line handshake routine very quickly, as he started for the first time in his career. Yarbs earned the honor with a 15-point, 9-rebound, 23.3 AdjGS performance last time out in the loss to South Dakota St.
Man, enough of that stuff. Starting is for high school(TM). Who played the most minutes?
- Yacoubou, Mike Crawford (25)
- McBroom, Manning (23)
- Roby (19)
Though the starters got a large share of minutes, this was a more even distribution of minutes than last game’s anomaly. Low twenties for some, double-digits for eleven of twelve. Jolly drew short straw with only six minutes logged, complicated by his three fouls.
The front court was downright regimented. Billiken Big Man Math came out to:
- Manning (23) + Gillmann (11) + Jolly (6) = 40 minutes
- Yarbrough (15) + Lancona (11) + Agbeko (14) = 40 minutes
Neato.
The backcourt combinations were a bit more dynamic, as The Safecracker continued to twist the knobs and listen for clicks.
SLU 67, SIUE 61
| SLU | SIUE | |
|---|---|---|
| 2-PT FG% | 62.5% | 42.9% |
| 3-PT FG% | 30.0% | 35.7% |
| FT% | 64.3% | 66.7% |
| True Shooting % | 61.7% | 47.7% |
SLU Player Stats
(Definitions at bottom of post)
- Very efficient game from McBroom, with production well beyond his points and a clean sheet: 0 TO, 0 PF. Austin feasts on the lower levels of the Land of Lincoln, as he put up a 26.9 AdjGS vs SIUC in Game One.
- Manning shrugged off a string of sub-par performances to stuff the stats and stay on the floor for extended minutes (at SLU this year, 23 qualifies as “extended minutes”)
- Perfect shooting night for Reynolds
- Lancona and Manning with three assists each is unusual. Also unusual that Gillmann nor Lancona attempted a three, and Yacoubou only shot one from deep. I suspect this is a reaction to an earful of Identity and Toughness discussions since SD State.
- Crawford got an extended look but scuffled with a pair of turnovers and as many fouls
- I get the sense Davell Roby’s contributions do not show in either traditional counting stats, nor what passes for advanced analytics at the NCAA level. SIUE’s Rozell Nunn (also 6’4″) put up a 40 ORtg and generally shot them out of this game. Roby Effect? We will have to wait for the SportVU install at Chaifetz to measure it. For now, we trust Coach Crews is seeing something to warrant the starts and the minutes.
Summary
Good to get a win in a medium leverage game, and wash some stink off. That it came against one of lowest-rated teams in the country (SIUE rocks a renegade soundsystem at #311) is immaterial. The Billikens are on a Quest for Meaningful Minutes, and they found an unexpected stash of them in Game Ten.
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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.
True Shooting %: Per Basketball Reference, true shooting percentage is a measure of shooting efficiency that takes into account field goals, 3-point field goals, and free throws.