Reality Check (Part 2)

Facts are facts. This Billikens team cannot play good enough defense to win consistently.

St. Louis University has got the scoring half of its game figured out. It's the defense that continues to be the team's curse.

So the fact that the Billikens shot 51.7 percent from the field — 60 percent on 3-pointers — and scored 79 points, their most since the opening weeks of the season, was rendered incidental by the team's inability to stop Temple. SLU lost 85-79 on Wednesday night before a paltry crowd at Temple's Liacouras Center. (Only Arizona in 2002 scored more points against a Brad Soderberg-coached Billiken team.) The loss drops SLU to 12-6 overall, 2-3 in the Atlantic 10, and moved it that much closer to having its whole season come down to the conference tournament.

This Temple team is pretty woeful, so this loss is terrible. Right now the Bills RPI put them out of the Top 100. To think they would have any legitimate NCAA aspirations is a joke. They now own losses to teams with RPIs of 152, 251, and 317. Their one win against a Top 25 RPI team was probably aided by a clock malfunction. (Missouri State fans would remove the "probably.")

It all adds up to a failure of a season.

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