Saint Louis Basketball: Billikens’ at-large hopes have taken a near-fatal hit

Saint Louis Basketball are the latest team to have lost a shot at an at-large bid after a bad loss. Is there any hope for an at-large bid for the Billikens?

Around two weeks ago, Saint Louis Basketball were 14-4 (5-0) and looking at a 12-seed as a conference champion with the potential of an at-large bid according to the CBS Sports Bracketology and Espn’s Bracketology with Joe Lunardi. Now that chance is all gone.

Since those rankings happened the Billikens have played in six games. Their record in those six games, 1-5. After starting conference play undefeated with five wins and the top spot in the Atlantic 10, they are now just one game above .500 and in eighth place in their conference with a realistic chance to having to play in the opening round Tuesday games at their conference tournament.

The Billikens started off conference play with so much potential, if they had not already had high expectations since the preseason. Led by the returning senior guard Javon Bess, sophomores  Jordan Goodwin and Hasahn French, adding graduate transfer Tramaine Isabelle and two ESPN graded recruits Fred Thatch and Carte’Are Gordon, the Billikens were seen as one of if not the team to beat his season in the Atlantic 10. Coming into the conference play they had only two losses that weren’t that good, a close away game at Southern Illinois 61-56 and a not so close neutral game against #11 Florida State 81-59, but their other losses were great losing a neutral game against Pitt 77-75 and by four at #24 Houston 68-64.

They even had some good wins, a close one at Seton Hall 66-64. A double-digit victory at home versus Butler, 64-52. As well as a win against Oregon State at home 68-64.

The Billikens had an actual case to get an at-large bid but losses against Richmond at home and away against Rhode Island weakened it to put them on the bubble. Now with last night’s 91-61 blowout against Saint Josephs on national TV, the bubble has popped. Friday’s loss was so bad, they didn’t have a lead at one point in the game past the first two minutes in the game. In addition, they went into the second half down by 11 and they failed to cut the Hawk’s lead into single-digits at least once.

Since the Atlantic 10 moved to an 18 game conference schedule in the 2014-15 season, there have been two ways a team got an at-large bid on Selection Sunday.

Way 1: Have 25 wins.

Saint Louis has no way of getting this as it involves them winning out including the tournament.

Way 2: Have 24 wins and at least a share of the conference regular season title

This one is more realistic as Saint Louis will have to win out and lose the championship round of the tournament to get 24 wins. The problem is that no team has won or at least tied for the Atlantic 10 regular season with under 14 wins, the most amount of wins that Saint Louis can get,13.

In the end, it looks like that this year won’t be the Billiken’s year as they have lost any chance of getting a spot in the tournament as an at-large. There’s a small chance that they won’t make the NIT. There’s no way the Billikens could make any one of those tournaments unless they win the Atlantic 10 championship tournament.