SLU begins a challenging week with a trip to George Washington

St. Louis University, at 12-7, 5-1, sits near the top of the Atlantic 10 standings, one of three teams with just one loss a third of the way into the league season. But the five teams SLU has beaten in conference play are a combined 10-21, and none of them are over .500.

What lies ahead for the Billikens is a grueling stretch of seven games in 21 days, starting with three in seven days. The first of those comes Saturday afternoon on the road at George Washington (13-6, 2-4), followed by home games against the two teams considered the best in the league, Virginia Commonwealth, which has already beaten SLU by 16 points, and then Dayton, which appears to have regained its form after a surprising three-game losing streak (which included a 20-point loss to GW).

“I’m fine,” said forward Kalu Anya. “This is what I want. I live for these moments. You want them to come here. You want those games like this. We’re ready for the moment.”

Center Robbie Avila, who sat next to Anya after the La Salle game, wouldn’t talk about tough stretches. “We don’t want to skip the first one though,” he said. “Our main focus right now is getting ready for GW, playing there. It will be a great environment, a great game. And when the other games come, we’ll get to it.”

But there’s no denying the importance of the next three weeks, especially for a team that has rounded off form but still shows room for improvement.

“I kind of think the dog days of the season are coming now,” coach Josh Schertz said. “We’ve been going since June. Feels like they’ve been going forever and it feels like we’re forever from the end. Everyone remembers the beginning and the end of things. But the longest part is always the middle , and we’re in the middle now. … It’s cold, it’s miserable out. This is where teams can really put themselves or put themselves back principles, double your values ​​or you give them up.

“These eight games (including Wednesday’s La Salle game) will determine what the finish looks like. We’ll see what we’re playing for after the next seven games. I told them that, because the middle will decide. Are we playing for a championship ? Are we playing for a top four seed? Are we playing to not be in the 11-15 games? I don’t know.

SLU still doesn’t have a win over a Quad 1 or Quad 2 team this season, though next week will give it two chances. And although SLU had nice victories against St. Joseph’s and St. Bonaventure at home, the finish left something to be desired. Against the Bonnies, SLU was up 16 with 4:35 to play and saw the lead shrink to four with 1:17 left. Against La Salle on Wednesday, SLU led by 21 with 5:04 left and saw that lead shrink to 10.

One of the things that has done is force Schertz to keep his starters on the field. He was about a minute away from taking out Gibson Jimerson on Wednesday, and then the game got close and Jimerson was on the court until the end, the fourth straight game he’s played all 40 minutes. For the eighth straight game, Isaiah Swope played more than 35 minutes. SLU will only have two days off between GW and VCU and two more days between VCU and Dayton,

But SLU does many things better. It has held its last two opponents under 60 points and has gotten better at making changes in the game, recovering and playing well after bad stretches rather than letting those bad stretches overwhelm them like it did earlier in the season.

“It goes back to having an identity,” Schertz said. “If you know your identity when you get away from it, it’s so much easier to course correct. You can reset yourself if you know who you are and you know what it is. And I can say, ‘Hey, that’s not the way we play.’ ‘Oh yes, that’s right. We have to do these other things.’ And I think we’re developing an identity on both ends of the floor. That doesn’t mean we’re a fully formed team yet, because we’re not. We have to tighten up on both ends, especially taking care of the basketball. But we have an identity and they have that as a group, they were able to fix that and play with more power offensively (against La Salle).

Now SLU has to start again and again and again. After the challenging week ahead, SLU will have another two-game road trip playing at UMass and St. Joseph’s, comes home to play league-leading George Mason, then hits the road again to face Loyola Chicago. SLU could be the favorite in one, maybe two games tops between now and Valentine’s Day.

“I just know,” Schertz said. “The way you navigate is you really double down on your internal standards. You really lock in your principles, your values. You stack possessions, which allows you to stack days that, if you stack days, can start to stack games. You can stack games, you can stack a season, but it starts with stacking possessions, and that’s the focus.”