A suffocating first-half defensive effort powered the best-in-conference Saint Louis University Billikens to a decisive 88-63 victory over the University of Richmond men’s basketball team Jan. 17.
The Spiders were among five Atlantic 10 teams sitting at 3-2 entering the contest, playing the Billikens for a shot at third place in the conference. Undefeated atop the A10, however, it did not take long for Saint Louis to flex their 4-0 conference record, burying the Spiders 14-2 in the first six minutes of play.
UR fought back to briefly narrow the gap to seven, but would manage a single-digit deficit for only two minutes before lights-out, 18-of-32 shooting from the Billikens put UR back in a double-digit hole for the remainder of the match.
Saint Louis continued to contain the Spiders down the stretch, holding UR to a paltry 25.9% field goal percentage by halftime. Despite smothering defense, the Billikens could not quite shut down every Spider, as graduate guard AJ Lopez and first-year guard Will Harper III helped carry UR to 17 of its 22 first-half points.
Finishing the night with a career-high 17 points, Harper’s performance doubled his season total, and saw him join Lopez — whose 20 points put him in double-digits for the ninth time in the last 10 games — as the only Spiders to tally in double-figures.
“[I] thought [Harper] was really good out there today,” UR Head Coach Chris Mooney said in a postgame press conference. “He’s scrappy, tough… he has really just put himself in a position to have this kind of impact on the team, and we thought he was doing well.”
UR — anchored by Lopez and Harper — opened a 41-point second half with an answer for every Saint Louis basket, a 7-0 run for UR underpinning an 18-point gain for each side soon after the break. Even with more Spiders pitching in on the score sheet however, UR’s deficit continued to hover around 30 points, with the Billikens coasting to a relatively comfortable win.
“You can’t dwell too much on the loss… but you do have to focus on the things that we could do to be better,” Mooney said. “You need to be able to score and that’s something that we’ve been able to do this year. This was the first game where it really was a grind for us to score… just some opportunities there that didn’t go our way.”
At the buzzer, Saint Louis had tallied another impressive conference win, now boasting a 17-1, 5-0 conference resume with an average margin of victory of 18.2 points in the A10.
In the loss, the Spiders dropped to 3-3 in the A10 and 13-6 overall, but will have opportunity to improve their mark at home against the University of Rhode Island, who will travel to UR as owners of a 1-4 A10 record, for a match Jan. 21 at 7 p.m.
Contact sports editor Scott Valentine at scott.valentine@richmond.edu
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