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Posted Wednesday, Jan. 11, 11:55 p.m. Saint Louis head coach Brad Soderberg summed up his team’s 69-64 overtime loss Wednesday night to the GW men’s basketball team with a perfect adage.
“They had every reason to lose tonight and they found a way to win and that’s the sign of a good team,” Soderberg said.
The No. 17/19 Colonials took their second straight game into overtime to top the Billikens on 44.6 percent shooting from the floor and 60.7 percent from the line. The Colonials (11-1, 2-0 Atlantic 10) were able to hold the Billikens (7-7, 1-1 A-10) to 39.1 percent shooting (25-for-64).
The Colonials narrowly evaded an upset by an unranked team for the second time in two games. With two seconds remaining in regulation and the score knotted at 54, freshman guard Tommie Liddell drove to the basket and kicked it out to an open Danny Brown just beyond the three-point arc. The ball slipped out of Brown’s hands and the game went into overtime.
GW opened up a 6-0 run in the first 1:07 of the extra period and never let the score dip below three points.
Junior Danilo (J.R.) Pinnock had his first career double-double with 19 points and 12 rebounds while sophomore Maureece Rice dropped 13. Senior Omar Williams and junior Carl Elliott had 10 points apiece for GW.
Pinnock, who scored big baskets throughout the game, said there were previous contests that helped them pull this one out.
“I just kept saying remember UMass and Xavier from last year,” Pinnock recalled, referring to two times last year that GW lost on last-second shots.
GW head coach Karl Hobbs said he was very pleased with the play of Pinnock.
“He’s really played tremendous, typically down the stretch,” Hobbs said. “He’s made big plays under pressure situations. For (Pinnock) to come up with 12 big rebounds on top of that is great.”
Early in the contest, the Colonials looked to senior Pops Mensah-Bonsu in the paint to try to convert on early buckets that prevented them from getting into a shooting rhythm. Mensah-Bonsu scored five points while grabbing six rebounds in 28 minutes of play.
Senior Mike Hall had two points and five rebounds in his second game with less than 10 points. Hobbs described Hall’s performance by saying “it just wasn’t his night.”
The Billikens were paced by Danny Brown’s career-high 23 points and 11 apiece from Kevin Lisch and Liddell.
Although SLU was able to keep pace with GW’s run-and-gun offense, Soderberg did not like Wednesday night’s brand of basketball.
“We did not play good basketball tonight,” Soderberg said. “I’m sure the outside observer would say ‘they really played tough against a top-20 team on the road’ but we turned it over 20 times, we were not able to keep people off the glass when it mattered and we shot like a junior high team from the free throw line.”
On his squad’s play, Hobbs said he is not that impressed. “We are just a team that’s overachieving a little bit. No more, no less.”
Saint Louis forced 17 GW turnovers but shot an abysmal 33.3 percent from the charity stripe.
The lead changed five times in the contest while the game was tied nine times. GW capitalized on Saint Louis’ 20 turnovers, converting the mistakes for 24 points compared to the Billikens’ 11.
A typical Colonials slow start proved dangerous as GW trailed 25-23 at the half after shooting 34.8 percent from the floor. Offensively, both teams had trouble holding on to the ball, with GW turning the ball over nine times while Saint Louis gave it up 10 times. The half was characterized by six tie scores and two lead changes. Neither team lead by more than five points while GW was clearly the chaser for most of the half.
The Colonials will try to stay unbeaten in the A-10 on Saturday when they battle Saint Joseph’s at the Smith Center at 2 p.m.
