Tommie Liddell III scored a game-high 22 points and Saint Louis never trailed after taking the lead midway through the first half in its 68-61 victory over No. 21 Rhode Island in an Atlantic 10 Conference game Thursday night at Scottrade Center.
“I thought we won it defensively and we’re getting better and better defensively,” SLU coach Rick Majerus said. “We have a lot of challenges. It was a really nice win for the guys. I thought they did a great job. I thought they hustled their heart out. I thought they competed. I thought they had a nice spirit about them.”
With its first win over a ranked opponent since defeating No. 23 Memphis on March 11, 2004 in the Conference USA tournament, Saint Louis improved to 10-7 overall and 1-2 in the A-10.
“We started off 0-2 in conference so we needed to get on the right track and with Rhode Island coming in it wasn’t going to be an easy task,” senior forward Luke Meyer said. “They’re a big team and we just fought hard and played some really good defense and hit some shots and got great contributions from Adam (Knollmeyer) and our bench tonight. It was just a real good win for us.”
Luke Meyer battles for a rebound(Tom Gannam/AP)
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Liddell scored his 22 points on nine-of-12 shooting, including three 3-pointers, and also grabbed six rebounds. Meyer had 12 points and five rebounds. Sophomore forward Adam Knollmeyer, starting in place of injured junior Barry Eberhardt, had six points and five rebounds in 15 minutes.
“Adam has worked real hard in practice,” Majerus said. “His practice effort has been good. It’s been the best of the guys who haven’t been playing. And he was gonna play ahead of Bryce anyway this game. He would not have started, but he was gonna play ahead of Bryce based on his practice performance. So it was fortuitous for him.”
The Billikens’ bench provided a big boost.
Freshman guard Paul Eckerle scored 13 points off the bench, including three 3-pointers, in 30 minutes. Senior guard Danny Brown had eight points and three assists. Senior center Bryce Husak had a team-high eight rebounds.
“I think this is big,” said Liddell, who became the 24th Billiken to top the 1,000-point plateau midway through the second half. “Coming into this game, we knew that Rhode Island would play real tough and we just really wanted to focus on them. We played some great defense. We boxed out pretty good, for the most part. But the team just really hustled and we came out with the win.”
Though they had four players score in double figure and held an 18-4 advantage in offensive rebounds, Rhode Island (15-3, 1-2) was held to season lows in shooting (34.3 percent) and scoring (previous low was 72 points in loss at Boston College).
“They’ve got some good players here,” said Rhode Island coach Jim Baron. “It’s not a rookie team. We’ve played against Liddell and we’ve played against Lisch and Meyer since they’ve been in the league. These guys, they are good.”
Saint Louis led 27-23 at halftime and stretched that lead to as many as 12 points, which came with 8 minutes and 46 seconds remaining in the second half. The Billikens led by 10 points with 1:41 left but saw Rhode Island cut that lead in half in the final minute, only to have Liddell, Meyer, junior guard Kevin Lisch and Eckerle make key shots in the final 45 seconds.
“They played very physical, very aggressive, used their bodies probably as good as anybody that we play against,” Baron said. “They do a good job of doing that and we had a tough time. Daniels got in foul trouble early and took us out of our momentum. You have to give them credit. They did a good job of sharing the basketball and playing defense and again we fell short.”
The Billikens have now won 15 of their last 17 games at home, with Temple coming to Scottrade Center for an A-10 game on Sunday afternoon. It looks like Saint Louis has put last week’s loss at George Washington behind them.
“Basketball is a crazy game,” Meyer said. “We had our terrible night last Thursday and we just have to move on and we have. It feels good beating a ranked team because they are going to be a force in the conference and we’re just happy to get out of it with a win tonight.”
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