By Aidan Joly
The Saint Louis Billikens are off to as good a start as anybody in college basketball and they are looking to get even better as the season continues.
They have kicked off the season by going 6-0 and just picked up its second win over a Power Six school with an 80-69 win over NC State on Thursday night.
Now, the question is, how good can this team get?
Having them being in the Atlantic 10, your mind might immediately go to a team like last year’s Dayton squad, that went 29-2, undefeated in league play and well on its way to a deep tournament run before COVID-19 canceled the postseason.
That level of success might just be realistic. And it surely helps that they are in the same conference.
Dayton did it with Obi Toppin, an explosive athlete that threw down highlight-reel dunks and had the ability to take over games more or less at will. This Billikens team does it behind the three-point line, where they sit sixth in the country, making them at a clip of 44.6%. Three of the teams ahead of them; Monmouth, Colorado State and Tennessee-Martin, have played two games or less, so there is not much sample size there. There’s a much larger one for Saint Louis.
They also sit seventh in the country in effective field goal percentage, making them one of the smartest shooting teams in the country.
The guy leading the way for this group is JaVonte Perkins, who averages 19.5 points per game and makes his threes at a mind-boggling 58.3% rate. It’s highly unlikely he will be looked at by NBA teams in the same way they looked at Toppin, who left Dayton last year after his sophomore season. Perkins is a senior, but don’t be surprised if he moves up draft boards through the season.
Similar to how Dayton was last year, Saint Louis has a ton of depth that can provide perks on offense as well. Jordan Goodwin, who has averaged 15.2 points per game, is kind of the Jalen Crutcher of this team, an above-average second go-to guy.
Billikens like Gibson Jimerson, Hasahn French, Yuri Collins and bench piece Demarius Jacobs provide a similar punch to Trey Landers, Ryan Mikesell, Rodney Chatman and Ibi Watson off the bench did for last year’s Flyers.
Now, for the comparisons. Through its first six games of the year last year, Dayton was 5-1, its only loss being in the Maui Invitational final against Kansas, one of the best games of the year that they dropped 90-84 in overtime. It was one of the two losses on the season, in which they didn’t lose in regulation all year. They ranked 23rd in KenPom at that time and got as high as fourth during the year.
As mentioned before, Saint Louis is 6-0 and currently sit at 28th in KenPom after Thursday’s win against KenPom 43rd-ranked NC State, its second win against a top-50 opponent. LSU was the other, 32nd on November 28. At that time last year, Dayton had none.
They have yet to crack the top 25, but they just might do so if they are to beat a better-than-expected Minnesota team, who they face on Sunday night at Williams Arena in Minneapolis. If they are to do that, it’ll be its third win against a top-60 opponent (Minnesota ranks 55th as of Friday). Two games later, they kick off Atlantic 10 play.
It’s easy to tell how good this Saint Louis team is, and it looks like they have quite the ceiling moving forward.
AJ Hoops 