Big games by Isaiah Swope, Robbie Avila, and Kalu Anya carried Saint Louis basketball to a 73-57 win over Saint Joseph’s
Swope led the way with 26 points and 8 assists, Avila added 21 points, 11 rebounds, and 5 assists, and Anya grabbed 15 rebounds for Saint Louis. After a slow non-conference, this team is living up to preseason hype, with back-to-back double-digit wins to start conference play. Read below for three takeaways from today’s game.
Takeaway #1: Saint Louis dominates the assist battle
Coming into this game, many thought it would be the other way. Saint Joseph’s ranked 28th in the country with 17.1 assists per game, while Saint Louis sat at 15.4. Tonight, it was all Saint Louis, winning the battle 20 to 5. First of all, only having five assists in a game is shocking, but it shows that Saint Joseph’s struggled to move the ball resulting in hero ball more often than not.
Meanwhile, everyone seemed to get involved for Saint Louis. Isaiah Swope finished with 8 assists, while Anya added four and Avila five. If Saint Louis can continue to move the ball like they did tonight, they’ll have a lot of success this season and turn around a season that looked at one point lost.
Takeaway #2: No bench, no problem
Saint Louis won’t play the bench too often, and you can expect all five starters to play 30 minutes minimum. Saint Louis had the 4th least amount of bench points coming into this game and added zero today.
If two of Swope, Avila, and Gibson Jimmerson are firing on all cylinders and are healthy and not in foul trouble, then there’s really no reason to sub them out like we saw tonight. The long-term fatigue will be a question, but if Saint Louis wants to win the A10 and replicate tonight’s performance, they have to trust the starters as they did tonight.
Takeaway #3: Saint Joseph’s goes ice cold from three
Typically, we see this Saint Joseph team shoot around 34.7% from three, 117th in the country. Tonight, the threes just weren’t falling. They shot 4-26, or 15%, including 1-11, or 9% in the second half. Erik Reynolds, Xzavier Brown, and Derek Simpson shot a combined 2-15 and they were never able to firmly get back in the game because of that.
Don’t expect this to be a common occurrence for the Hawks, but a disappointing performance from deep and a key reason for the defeat.
Up next for Saint Louis (9-6 overall, 2-0): vs. Saint Bonaventure (13-1, 1-0) – Jan. 8 at 7:00 p.m CT
Up next for Saint Joseph’s (10-5 overall, 1-1): at Duquesne (6-8 overall, 1-0) – Jan. 8 at 6 p.m. CT