Oh, what might have been.
For the second time this season, Saint Louis University played a top-5 team in the nation down to the final minute before bowing out with a loss.
The Billikens, playing without their team captain and leading scorer, came up just short to Steve Logan and the No. 4 ranked Cincinnati Bearcats, losing 54-50 at the Savvis Center Tuesday night.
Who knows what the outcome would have been if Marque Perry, SLU’s starting point guard, had been healthy enough to play. Perry missed his fourth game of the season with complications following a concussion suffered two weeks ago against Washington.
He could only sit and watch as the Billikens committed 16 turnovers, struggled to get open looks at the basket and eventually dropped to 1-3 without him.
While the Bearcats picked up their 18th straight win, it did not come easy, and it certainly did not come pretty. A stifling Billiken defense held Cincinnati to 43 percent shooting and, more importantly, caused 16 Bearcat turnovers.
However, the Bearcats did their job on defense, holding SLU to only 34 percent shooting. SLU also went the final five minutes of the first half without a point, and went almost seven minutes without a basket in the second half.
“The last five minutes of the half we shot ourselves in the leg,” said sophomore guard Jason Edwin, who led the Billikens with 15 points. “I think that’s what cost us the game.”
SLU showed flashes of dominance throughout the game. Midway through the first half, the Billikens, led by Edwin and junior Chris Braun, jumped ahead with a 12-0 run to take a 20-11 lead with six minutes left. But they would only get one more 3-pointer from Edwin the rest of the half, and Cincinnati finished the first half on a 19-3 run and looked to be seizing momentum.
“We had the momentum. We had everything going in our favor,” Billiken coach Lorenzo Romar said. “For three minutes, we just had a mental lapse that maybe cost us the game.”
It appeared as though those three minutes were when SLU needed Perry the most. At one point in the final few minutes of the first half, the Billikens turned the ball over three consecutive times without getting off a single shot.
All three turnovers resulted in points for Cincinnati. The Bearcats ended up scoring 21 points off of SLU turnovers.
The Billikens did not roll over and play dead in the second half. They came out fired up and came right back at Cincinnati, clawing their way back into the game.
A lay-up off of an offensive rebound by Edwin and back-to-back spot-up jump shots by Drew Diener pulled the Billikens to within two points with 7:36 left in the game.
“With Marque out, we need guys to step up for us,” said junior guard Josh Fisher. “Jason and Drew did a great job of that tonight.”
Fisher provided some heroics of his own just a few moments later. With the shot clock running down, Fisher pulled up from well beyond the 3-point line and drained the shot to tie the game at 43 and send the crowd of 12,103 into a frenzy.
But that would be the last basket SLU would have until the final minute.
Defense has been the driving force behind Cincinnati’s winning streak and its resulting surge up the polls. This fact has not been lost on Romar.
“It’s no fluke if they held our guys to 35 percent shooting,” Romar said. “Many teams have a lot of hype and are perceived to be really good. Then there are teams that are the real deal, and that’s Cincinnati.”
And although he was disappointed in their shooting, Bearcats coach Bob Huggins was impressed with the job his team did on defense.
“We shot 42 percent because of our defense, because we stole the ball and shot layups,” Huggins said. “If you take those layups away, we were abysmal.”
One Bearcat who was far better than abysmal was last year’s Conference USA Most Valuable Player, Steve Logan. Logan poured in 25 points on 10 of 20 shooting and also picked up three steals in 38 minutes.
He was the only Cincinnati player to score in double figures and was the Bearcats’ go-to guy down the stretch. His layup with 45 seconds left all but iced the game. He now ranks No. 4 in scoring in C-USA history.
“He wasn’t the MVP of last season for nothing,” Romar said. “He’s a gamer.”
After winning 17 straight games, all by blowouts, many players would have strolled into St. Louis looking ahead to the next game, but not the senior Logan. He had not forgotten that SLU had won three of its last six games against the Bearcats.
“I’ve been here before,” Logan said, referring to his trips to the Savvis Center. “I expect it to be like this.”
While Romar was pleased with the effort his team gave, he was not satisfied with the final score.
“You can say, `Well, you played the No. 4 team in the country to a four-point game,'” Romar said. “Well, that may be fun to talk about, but that doesn’t give us the victory. At home, we have got to win those games.”
The Billikens will try to rebound from their tough defeat as they complete their three-game C-USA homestand Saturday against the Marquette Golden Eagles at the Savvis Center at 1 p.m.
