With its sights set on a lengthy postseason run, No. 18 Saint Louis wants to play more consistently as it takes an 18-game winning streak on the road for an Atlantic 10 tilt against Rhode Island on Tuesday in Kingston, R.I.
Rhode Island (14-11, 5-7 Atlantic 10) has lost two straight games, the latest a 70-66 overtime setback at home against Fordham on Saturday.
Even though Saint Louis (24-1, 12-0) posted an 86-59 win at Loyola Chicago on Friday, the fashion in which it did left Billikens’ coach Josh Schertz wanting more.
Saint Louis closed the first half on an 8-0 run to take a 10-point lead into the locker room. The Billikens outscored the Ramblers 47-30 in the second half when they played with pace and got hot from beyond the arc.
Trey Green and Ishan Sharma led a consistent Billikens’ scoring attack with 14 points. Each connected on four 3-pointers and led the Billikens’ blitz from long range. As the owners of the nation’s No. 1 scoring margin at 23 points and No. 4 scoring offense at 90.8 points, Saint Louis can rack up points in a hurry. The Billikens shot 43.8% (14 of 32) on 3-point attempts against Loyola.
But they did more than that, too. Saint Louis outrebounded Loyola 44-28, held a 38-14 edge on points in the paint and cruised to an 18-9 advantage in fast-break points.
Yet Schertz said the Billikens have room for improvement. Saint Louis is all the way up to No. 17 in the NCAA NET rankings and it has risen to No. 4 in the nation in fast-break points at 18.7 per game.
“I think we can play a lot better than we are playing,” Schertz said. “I have a pretty good pulse on the team and I think the guys feel that way, too. We aren’t playing up to our possibilities consistently enough. We feel like our best is as good as anybody’s best. But it’s now February and good teams are able to get to their best on a consistent basis and that’s what we aren’t doing.
“We have six regular-season games left and hopefully a chance to make a long post season run. We need to play to our possibilities more consistently. The 18-game win streak is great, but we have to play a lot better than we’ve been playing, starting Tuesday night in Rhode Island.”
While the Rams have been besieged by injuries, leading scorer Tyler Cochran (15.1 points per game) pumped in a game-high 25 points against Fordham. He shot 9 of 13 on field-goal attempts and 3 of 4 from 3-point range while pulling down a team-best nine rebounds.
Jahmere Tripp (12.5 points) is the Rams third-leading scorer and had missed the last two games with an undisclosed injury. Second-leading scorer Jonah Hinton (13.5 points) returned from a three-game absence due to an ankle injury on Tuesday in a 75-70 loss at George Washington. He came off the bench for the first time all season the last two games.
Rhode Island coach Archie Miller speculated Hinton “might not be 100% for the rest of the year.”
“We’ve been such a MASH unit the last two to three weeks with guys in and out of games that you are sort of learning to play with new combinations,” Miller said. “The only thing we can do is to continue to throw guys in there.”
