The Saint Louis University men’s basketball team won’t win the national championship this season (probably because they didn’t make it to the tournament-either one, for that matter), they didn’t win the A-10, and no banner will be hung from the Scottrade Center commemorating any facet of this season. And save for the Billiken faithful, most of the people who follow college basketball -fans, analysts, gamblers -have already forgotten everything that the 2006-07 SLU squad accomplished this season.
The Billikens started the year 10-3. All three losses came against teams that have danced their way to the Sweet 16: a 69-33 beatdown at Texas A&M in November, a 65-56 loss at Southern Illinois in December and a 69-48 defeat at home to North Carolina-a game in which SLU trailed by just one point at halftime-over Christmas Break. How about that? For 20 minutes on a dreary night in late December, SLU was within one point of being as good as the Tar Heels, a favorite to win the national championship. SLU might have been outscored by 20 points in the second half, but things were looking up. Despite its respectable start, however, the Billikens were consistently inconsistent throughout conference play, going 8-9 to close out the regular season and unable to win more than two games in a row. SLU’s season can be summed up in six words: home games good; road games bad. In fact, if the Billikens were Superman, conference road games were their kryptonite; they went 7-1 at home and 1-7 on the road, including a three-point loss at Massachusetts and a one-point loss at Dayton in triple overtime. A one-point loss at Houston didn’t exactly do wonders for morale, either. The Billikens’ mediocre 8-8 conference record was good enough for a mediocre finish in the regular season conference standings: eighth out of 14 teams.
With an 18-11 record entering the conference tournament in Atlantic City, N.J., the Billikens would have to win the A-10 Tourney to make the NCAA Tourney. And that is when the Billikens came alive.
They defeated Duquesne 78-77 in the opening round to avenge its only conference home loss of the season, a 73-63 setback against the Dukes in January. The next day, SLU met the No. 2 seed, Massachusetts, and flipped the script on the Minutemen, this time escaping on the right side of a three-point contest in overtime.
A win in the semifinals against George Washington, a team that the Billikens defeated by 10 points in early February, would land SLU in the conference finals against Rhode Island, who defeated top-seeded Xavier, to play for an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. But playing its third game in three days, the Billikens struggled to get anything going offensively, mustering just 16 points in the first half before losing 60-40 to the eventual tournament champions. The Billikens’ 40-point performance was its second-most futile scoring output of the season, the most futile being the aforementioned debacle at College Station against A&M.
And with that, the season was over. Brad Soderberg led the Billikens to a 20-13 season-Soderberg’s first 20-win season as a head coach and the program’s first 20-win season since 1997-98. The Billikens did it with defense; SLU was 17-7 in games in which they held their opponent to 70 or fewer points, and 9-3 when holding their opponent to 60 or fewer points. They also set a school record for most blocks in a season, with 142, eclipsing the previous benchmark of 126 set by the 1999-2000 team. The Billikens were 5-3 in games decided by fewer than four points, including 2-0 in the conference tournament. One can argue that the Billikens, whose RPI after the A-10 Tournament was 74, should have been given a bid to the NIT. But it was not to be.
The 2006-07 campaign also saw its fair share of individual accomplishments. Senior Ian Vouyoukas was the 22nd Billiken to score more than 1,000 points in his career and is the school’s all-time leader in blocks, with 135.
Sophomore Tommie Liddell, who was named to the All-Conference second team, set a school record for most threes made in one game, with eight, in an 85-79 loss at Temple in January. Liddell led the team in scoring at 15.4 ppg and was second on the team in rebounds and assists with 7.0 rpg and 2.9. He finished in the top 15 in the conference in three-point field goal percentage (third, .471), field-goal percentage (sixth, .470), was 12th in rebounding and 13th in scoring. Liddell scored in double figures in 26 of 30 regular season games.
Fellow sophomore guard Kevin Lisch, the team’s second leading scorer at 15.1 ppg, was named to the A-10 All-Defensive Team and received an All-Conference Honorable Mention. He finished in the top 10 in the conference in free-throw percentage (sixth, .819) and three-point field goal percentage (ninth, .409). The shooting guard has already nailed 125 career three-point shots, which is good enough for sixth all-time in school history; his three-point shooting clip of .411 is fourth all-time. The absence of Vouyoukas in the post will be sorely missed next season, but with Liddell and Lisch returning next season, the Billikens figure to remain competitive. Although a national championship is still far beyond the horizon, the A-10 crown remains a slowly approaching sight somewhere in the distance.
