Career performances from forwards Dwayne Evans and Cody Ellis propelled Saint Louis University to a 90-73 victory over a feisty Fordham squad Wednesday night in the Bronx. The win was the Billikens’ fifth in a row and moved them into a tie with VCU and No. 14 Butler for first place in the Atlantic 10.
Evans recorded his first ever double-double as a Billiken, finishing with 10 rebounds and a career-high 24 points on 10 of 12 shooting. The 6-5 junior did most of his damage in the second half, accounting for 14 of the team’s 16 points scored over a nearly seven-minute stretch.
It was also a big night for Ellis who hit six of the team’s seven three-pointers and was a perfect four-for-four from the charity stripe en route to a personal-best 22-point performance.
“I think early in the game we did a good job getting the ball inside, then Cody kind of had a lot of shots—and they were good shots, we didn’t have a lot of problems with those shots the first half, he hit some,” interim coach Jim Crews explained during his postgame interview on 101 ESPN. “In the second half we had a lot of opportunities to punch it inside and our guys did a good job getting the ball into Dwayne in a variety of ways and in a variety of positions and he was able to complete those.”
SLU (17-5, 6-2 A 10) led by as many as 12 early in the second half, but Fordham refused to go away quietly, trimming the score to 66-57 behind a pair of free throws from Branden Frazier with 7:04 left.
That would be as close as the Rams would get, however, as a 3-pointer from Ellis a minute later pushed the Billikens’ lead back to double-digits and deflated their youthful opponent.
While Saint Louis U. finished the game shooting just 63 percent from the free throw line, it picked up the slack late in the game, hitting 11 of 12 over the final five minutes.
After a pair of free throws from Mandell Thomas knotted the score at 22 with 7:06 left in the first half, Ellis took over, single-handedly leading the Billikens on a 14-6 run that featured four triples made possible by four different teammates, including Mike McCall Jr. who registered two of his six assists on Ellis 3-pointers.
“I thought the first half we did some good things, but we really kind of let them off the hook,” Crews said. “[We had] too many fouls, number one—they’re really quick, they’re hard to guard—and number two they got offensive rebounds. We shored that up a little bit in the second half. They were still hard to guard, but we didn’t foul quite as much and I think the rebounds we did a pretty good job.”
For the fourth time in five games, guard Jordair Jett finished with double figures in scoring with 14 points on six of eight shooting.
As a team, the Billikens shot 57 percent from the field and hit seven of 17 3-point attempts.
SLU will wrap-up its second two-game road trip of the season on Saturday against Richmond. The Spiders are 4-4 in conference play following a 73-71 victory over Xavier on Feb. 2.
“They do a lot of that Princeton offense and defense,” Crews said. “You have to be sharp with a lot of different things both offensively and defensively, but we’ll study that tonight and tomorrow and get ready for it. We look forward to the challenge—they have a very good basketball team.”
Tip-off is set for 5 p.m. The game will be televised locally on KPLR 11.
