Exhibition Season Begins

For the Saint Louis University men’s basketball team, there is no more Love. Justin Love, the Billiken’s leading scorer from last season, is playing for the Phoenix Suns. The Bills will begin the “no Love” season this Saturday with Athletes in Action at 12:10 p.m. at the Savvis Center.

Coach Lorenzo Romar said in a press release, “We’ve worked hard in the preseason and throughout our conditioning. This group is probably for a game to judge where we stand right now.”

The Bills will try to find the right mix of players as they begin their quest to repeat as Conference USA champions.

“We’ve got a chance to figure out what some people can do early. While you like to win the exhibition games, we’re more interested in seeing what our new people can do. We also need to see which combinations of players work well together and try to establish some substitution patterns.

Leading the way for SLU will be seniors Maurice Jeffers, Matt Baniak, Chris Heinrich and Justin Tatum. These four seniors will be looked on to fill the void left by Love’s departure.

The leading candidate to step into Love’s role is sophomore Josh Fisher. After sitting the year out, Fisher followed Romar from Pepperdine, Fisher will be expected to pick up some of the scoring slack.