Sometimes it takes losing a player to appreciate his value. The Saint Louis University men’s basketball team learned that lesson the hard way against Richmond. Playing without freshman starting point guard Kwamain Mitchell strongly reinforced the feeling.
After receiving a moderate concussion toward the end of an already tough loss (to put it mildly) at Temple last Thursday, Mitchell’s role against Richmond was reduced to raising invisible pom-poms as he sat on the bench in a snazzy Polo ensemble. The Billikens definitely could have used him.
With Mitchell out, the lineup saw changes that it hadn’t experienced all season on the way to a 70-62 home loss. Senior Kevin Lisch, who has been known as a solid starting shooting guard most of his career at SLU, was asked to run the point. Although Lisch is a future Billiken hall of famer and has been placed in that situation a few times this season, it still creates difficult circumstances. Not only does it thoroughly alter Lisch’s game, it also shakes up the rest of the lineup.
Think of it like an assembly line in an auto plant. There are different stations in which workers are asked to fulfill different tasks. The guy who paints the car somehow finds himself tightening the screws because the guy who tightens the screws decided to take his union-mandated 15-minute break. As you can imagine, the screws end up not as tight as they should be. Plus the car never gets painted.
Compare that to the basketball team without Mitchell. Lisch is forced to run the point and Paul Eckerle earns the start at shooting guard, rotating throughout the game with Kyle Cassity. Although Eckerle and Cassity do a solid jobs on defense, they cannot produce like Lisch on offense. Lisch still has the opportunity to score; however, because Mitchell normally runs the offense, overall team production drastically decreases.
Let’s take a gander at the numbers from the Richmond game, shall we? Although Tommie Liddell III and Lisch score 13 and 18 points respectively, they were the only players in double figures. More importantly, the entire team finished with five assists in the game, including a whopping zero in the second half.
Mitchell alone produced five, four and six assists in the past three games he has played. The production was sorely missed.
The Richmond game offered an interesting (not to mention frightening) insight into how the team performs without a true point guard. SLU needs a consistent point guard. Mitchell is an indispensable part of the team.
In case anyone is curious, none of the players the Billikens have committed for next season are listed as true point guards; however, Majerus did mention recently that a couple years down the line Cassity could become a serviceable backup at that spot.
Joe George is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences
