Continuing a month-long turnaround that seems too surreal to be a Hollywood script, the Saint Louis University men’s basketball team pulled out another big win last night against a University of North Carolina-Charlotte team that was previously ranked fourth in the conference and had serious post-season aspirations. It marked the third time in as many weeks that the Bills had knocked off a conference power, Louisville and Cincinnati being the two previous opponents.
“We are a team most people don’t want to play right now,” head coach Brad Soderberg said.
Soderberg’s words came immediately after the Billikens trumped the UNC-Charlotte 49ers 50-39, extending their season-long winning streak to six games and closing out their home schedule.
The win was important for two reasons. First, last night was senior night and seniors Marque Perry, Kenny Brown, Drew Diener and Chris Braun were honored before the game in a touching tribute with their parents and coach Brad Soderberg in front of 10,000 Billiken faithful.
“This was our last time putting on a jersey and playing in Savvis. There are a lot of memories for us here, and we’re going to miss it all,” Perry said.
The second reason why this win was important is that it kept the Bills’ hopes for an NCAA tournament berth alive. In fact, yesterday, ESPN.com and their crack team of “NCAA bracket wizards” upgraded the Bills to a team sitting squarely on the bubble, as far as the “Big Dance” is concerned.
The Bills and 49ers each started the game off rocky offensively. In fact, the score was tied 8-8 with less than eight minutes remaining in the half. However, that’s when the Billikens started to pull away, building a 10-point lead at the half that was highlighted by Perry’s coast-to-coast heroics in the final five seconds, laying the ball in just as the clock expired.
“Despite the fact that other guys are obviously important, he is obviously the heart and soul for their team,” Charlotte head coach Bobby Lutz said about Perry.
The second half started out just as the first half had ended: with a Billikens’ run. After building a comfortable 12-point lead, the Bills relied on their steady ball-control offense and tenacious defense, two staples of their midseason turnaround, to keep the 49ers at bay.
The Bills put the game away inside the final two minutes as they stayed hotter than an armadillo’s hide at a West Texas picnic on the Fourth of July and sunk some clutch free throws in the closing minutes, to seal the deal for the Bills.
Perry was the game’s high scorer, dropping in 17, which put him over 1,300 points for his career as a Billiken. Izik Ohanon contributed another 10 to the win. For the 49ers, only Calvin Clemmons reached double digits, scoring 12. But even that was a task, as the Billikens held Charlotte to season lows in field-goal percentage, which was 28 percent, and points scored, as the 49ers were only able to scrounge up 39 points. The Billikens also limited conference three-point leader Demon Brown to nine points, none of which came in the first half, due largely to the stifling defense of Josh Fisher.
“You have to give a lot of credit to Fisher, holding Brown down like he did. He was definitely our defensive player of the game,” Perry said.
The Bills will head to East Carolina this Saturday to close out the regular season. The Bills beat East Carolina earlier this year at Savvis. If they win that they look to garner a high seed in the upcoming conference tournament and complete an almost miraculous turnaround from a disastrous start to the season.
“We are the same team we were a month and a half ago, and we are still working just as hard. Now things are starting to come together for us,” Soderberg said.
In any event, the Billikens are going to have to finish out the conference season strong and have a strong showing in the conference tournament, if they hope to pull a Fred Astaire and dance into the post-season tournament.
“We have a great deal of confidence right now, but we still have to think of ourselves as underdogs with our backs against the wall. But we’ll keep fighting,” Perry said.
