Saint Louis:
The Billikens have played and won two exhibition games against two non-D1 schools. SLU has a new coach, Josh Schertz who came over from Indiana St. after a successful 30+ win season and helping Indiana St. advance to the NIT finals. Schertz brought a couple of players with him including media darling center Robbie Avila.
Starting lineup from their most recent exhibition game; all stats shown are from 2023/24:
6-10 junior center Robbie Avila (17pts, 6.6rebounds, 4 assists, 39% from 3.
6-5 6th year senior wing Gibson Jimerson (15.8pts, 36% from, ~2.5 made 3’s per game)
5-10 senior guard Isaiah Swope - transfer from Indiana St. (15.9pts, and 4th in the country in made 3’s w/ 113 made)
6-4 senior guard Kobe Johnsons - transfer from West Virginia (6pts, 2assists)
6-8 junior forward Kalu Anya - transfer from Brown (9.6pts, 7.4rebs)
Primary backups appear to be 6-4 guard Larry Hughes II (7.4pts), dad is a former Billiken long time NBA player; and 6-6 wing Kellen Thames (6pts, 4rebs).
The Billikens have a ton of 3pt threats w/ Swope, Jimerson and Avila plus Hughes off the bench. Avila is a poor man’s Nikola Jokic, a playmaker and good passer as well as 3pt threat; he will test Tilly and pull him away from the hoop.
And Carlos Stewart or another Bronco guard are going to have guard Swope close on the perimeter as he often attempts a ton of 3’s.
The time is now for the Broncos with a deep, experienced team; our entire starting lineup and top 8 or 9 rotation guys are all 3rd or 4th (or 5th year) players.
This is a tough game to open the season but also an opportunity to log a win against a solid team. Hope to see the Broncos bench provide an advantage. I expect Cam to play plenty off the bench and hoping to see Mahi impact the game whether he starts or comes off the bench.
Prediction: Broncos prevail in a hard fought game, 79-76.
92bronc…Again, thank you for a solid start to the season with your game by game previews. We all appreciate them, and definitely benefit from your analysis, at least I do personally.
Here’s another swag at St. Louis. This is based upon the actual performances from every player’s offensive and defense possessions from last season ranked against the St. Louis roster performances.
Hope the link works.
Avila will be one of the best players that SCU will face all season on the offensive end. Here’s a good video breaking down his moves on offense. But he is a notoriously bad defender. Tilly may want to try to front him in the post, using his height to prevent entry passes. Tongue will have no choice but to stay between him and the basket but can play with good aggression to limit Avila.
They are very good from the perimeter, but SCU had pretty decent 3-point defense last year–I think largely due to having massive guards–and will still have a big height advantage in the guard spots.
In the end, this is continuity versus talent to some degree. Schertz, Swope, and Avila came as a package deal, but it’s a new town, arena, and supporting cast. Avila has also supposedly missed 3-4 weeks of practice and one of scrimmages due to minor injuries. Santa Clara’s guys all know each other and will hopefully be more polished where it matters. Mahi is an x-factor. If he can be 2/3 as good as he was at the JC level, the Broncos will go far.
As far as I know, SCU is 1-0 against SLU in season openers. So let’s keep the streak going.
For SLU, in addition to the continuity and benefit of Schertz bringing key starters Avila and Swope with him, there are also three key and experienced rotation guys who stayed at SLU despite the coaching change; Jimerson, Hughes and Thames. You’d think that familiarity would help with continuity and team chemistry and help w/ the learning curve of adjusting to a new system and regime.
Re: advanced stats and predictions by Torvik and EvanMiya…though I consider myself a stat geek I have a hard time putting much stock in preseason analytics. Things change from season to season…some players improve and take big steps forward…some don’t. Some coaches introduce new strategies, offensive sets, etc. each season. And even in the Bronco’s case with a significant # of returners, there are still notable rotation changes. Key scorer and 3pt threat Marshall is gone. Cafarro’s play wasn’t always consistent but he had several good games where his size and physicality in the post was very valuable. And the point guard play and playmaker roles may look different with the return of Stewart. Meanwhile, Mahi seems to bring a skill set combination that is unlike anyone else on the roster this season or last…how that impacts or benefits the Broncos remains to be seen.
Will be interesting to see who we use to guard Avila. Read an article on him where he is quoted as having a “negative wingpsan” (height greater than wingspan) and the film confirms it. If we fear him more as a shooter/distributor then I could see us running guys like Bryan/Tongue at him all night who have mobility, strength, and big wingspans. One thing is for certain, this should be the deepest team in recent Broncos history and if something is not working then let’s hope we course correct quickly.
Tilly needs to have a big year for this team to achieve its full potential in my opinion. He made progress last year but I expected more. I think a lot of that was probably losing a guy with elite vision (Podziemski) who could feed him the ball in the right place. My expectation for him is to be a no doubt All Conference Player.
Will Bal or Stewart be the primary ball handler? Looking forward to having Stewart’s disruptive hands back on defense. It is always nice to expect a few more breakaway dunks each game.
Is Graves the wildcard? He makes some incredible passes for a guy his size in the high school film I have seen but sometimes it takes a year to adjust to the college game. You could convince me right now he becomes a major contributor, or only plays garbage time. No idea what to expect with a true freshman.
SLU has a nice little athletics forum community of their own. Here’s the link the the thread with the Billiken frame of mind (please don’t invade or, if you do, at least be polite to our Jesuit-educated friends).
Farmer gives good coverage. His rant at the end about GCU is pretty good too.
And I like the new SCU podcast. A little more prep work will be important–less Googling mid-podcast. But the episode’s breakdown of the scrimmages and the new players is really solid and helpful. Throw a bit more polish on the production, and they will really have something going there.
I checked in for a moment on the first game of the triple header: Southern IL vs College of Charleston. Fairly close game so far. But roughly 10k watching on YouTube. This should be a good event for SCU for exposure and hope that it leads to more neutral games that use YouTube as the vendor for coverage. Much more accessible than FloSports or other bizarre third party media companies buy the rights to these events.
Avila makes me nervous about this game. The last time we had to face a talented away from the basket big - we got dominated by Yale, I think the kid was named Wolf?
Hopefully we watched the tape from that game last year.
Anyways Broncos 67-SLU 61 in a weird start time, mildly ugly game to start the year.
Offense stagnant. Defense not aggressive. SCU is way more athletic than SLU. This should be a thrashing. Avila so slow and useless… just take it right at him.
