"There is no substitute for Success"--Louis Orr

On what is America's official college football holiday, the Falcon men's basketball team picked up a very nice victory in St. Louis, defeating the Saint Louis Billikens by 6 points--the team's first road win of the season.  It is also far and away the best win of the season, and was a game when we were a 13-point underdog.

All the most amazing is that BG won the game without making a 3-FG.  I checked--it is not the first time that it has happened in D1 this year.  In fact, BG only tried 4---the lowest this year has been 3 in D1.

If you are a Falcon fan, you know how we won the game... we played (all together now) "Inside-out."

BG was, in fact, dominant inside the paint, scoring 42 of the team's 67 points in the paint.

The Falcons had a slow start, falling behind 7-2 and turning the ball over on its first few possessions.  BG righted the ship and tied the game at 9.  BG led by 2 at the half.  The Billikens took the initiative in the second half as well, leading for most of the first 7 minutes.  The game was tied with 8:04 left, but BG went on a 14-4 run over the next 5 minutes to take a lead they would not relinquish.

The string featured no Billiken FGs and four outright stops by the Falcons and 9 points from A'uston Calhoun, showing his ability to take over a game when he is playing the way he was capable.

Just as importantly, from there on in, it was never a one-possession game.  In fact, over the last 6:55, there was not one possession where the Billikens had the ball and the chance to tie the game.

The game flow is really important for this game.  It was a tight game for 32 minutes--one of those games where every possession is contested and important.  BG went on a run from there, and closed the down on the win by playing very strong ball down the stretch.  That's the kind of win we like to see and the kind that you need in conference play.

College Basketball Stats

There were a lot of fouls and it was a game where parts of it did not seem to have any real flow.  There were 63 possessions, which is slower than both teams prefer to play.  At 1.06 points per possession, BG was over 1 point per possession for the  5th straight game after not doing all year prior to that against D1 competition.  Our effective FG% was over 50%, also for the 5th straight game.

Just as importantly, in a foul-laden game, BG was 17-23 from the line, which is their second best night of the year.  With no 3s, it would have been difficult to win without good free throw shooting.  In the same vein, BG turned the ball over only 12 times for the whole game, and that's after giving it up four times before the popcorn was popped.  If you're not going to make 3s, you need to get shot attempts.

On the defensive side, we held St. L to .96 points per possession, which is right on their season average--an average developed against a tough schedule.  We didn't get the huge number of turnovers we have been getting (14), but this time the FG defense was really strong, holding them to 37% from the field and 21% from the line, our second best performance of the year (best was Albany).  In fact, the only thing keeping the Billikens in the game was a +6 advantage at the free throw line.

College Basketball

When looking at individual players, it was a little more of a star-focused game than the UTSA game, where no one had a huge game, but lots of guys had good ones.  In this game, Dee Brown had 21 points on 7-12 FG shooting and 7-9 FT shooting, which is a very efficient offensive effort.  A'uston Calhoun, riding the strength of his 9 points in the decisive drive, had 20 points (9-14 shooting) to go with 7 rebounds.

Jordan Crawford had 10 points and 6 assists, and while Scott Thomas did not score, he did get 8 rebounds and 4 steals, proving you can contribute without shooting.  Torian Oglesby added 8 points and 4 rebounds in 21 minutes.

A final note:  SLU's coach, the legendary Rick Majerus, was in some kind of sideline collision and it sounded like he was off the bench for most of the game.

So, the title of this post is important.  The team now has a few wins under its belt, one of them on the road, and now has a week off heading into conference play.  There are a lot of acts left in this play, but I think Falcon fans can be confident that we will make an interesting and competitive run at our conference opponents.