Friday, January 11, 2008

Next Time, Definitely!!

In a fit of civic pride, the St. Louis University Billikens did their best Adam Kennedy impersonation last night: They couldn't hit a fucking thing.

Once you've lost a game by 41 points, as St. Louis University did to Kent State earlier this season, just about everything is going to look better by comparison.

But Thursday, SLU opened its Atlantic 10 Conference season with a thud to end all thuds. Shooting abysmally in the first half and improving to awful in the second — or was it the other way around? — SLU was demolished by George Washington, 49-20 at Smith Center.

It was a little bit of history. SLU's 20 points were the fewest scored in a game by anybody in Division I since the shot clock was instituted by the NCAA in 1985-86. (The previous low was 21 points, by Georgia Southern in 1997 and Princeton in 2005.)

SLU made 14.6 percent of its shots to break the school mark for lowest shooting percentage in a game, though the school's record book leaves some room for debate on that topic based on some scores from the 1920s. It was the fewest points SLU had scored in a game since a 41-18 loss to Oklahoma A&M in January 1942.

At one point last night I saw the score on the ticker that read "SLU 8 GW 29 (H)" and I thought "that HAS to be a typo." It turns out it was a typo. SLU actually didn't score point number eight until the second half.

The only saving grace is that I wasn't watching this debacle.

Rick Majerus has to be thinking, "I came out of retirement for this?"

1 comment:

Southlandish said...

I should feel better knowing that as you typed this I was talking to my brother and we were lamenting the pitiful Illini perimeter game....but I don't.