CONWAY, S.C. – Saint Louis fell 78-68 to Vermont in the semifinals of the Myrtle Beach Invitational at the HTC Center on Friday.
The Billikens (4-1) will play next in the third-place game of the Myrtle Beach Invitational on Sunday night at 7 p.m. (CT) against the loser of tonight's Liberty/Wichita State game. Vermont (4-0) advances to Sunday's Myrtle Beach Invitational title game.
The Billikens were without leading scorer Sincere Parker, who is out indefinitely after suffering a broken foot in yesterday's game against Wyoming.
Gibson Jimerson led the way for SLU with 18 points. In the process he passed Luther Burden and Marque Perry on SLU's all-time scoring list and is now 15th in school history with 1,366 career points.
Terrence Hargrove Jr. went for 15 points and five rebounds. Tim Dalger registered 10 point and six rebounds. Kellen Thames tied Dalger for the team high with six boards. Michael Meadows Jr. had a team-high five assists.
Djordje Curcic hit a pair of treys and finished with six points. Cian Medley scored seven points, all in the second half.
The Billikens never led in the game. They were down 15 at half but came out firing with a Dalger basket and Jimerson triple to force an early Vermont timeout in the second half.
A 6-0 Billiken run soon followed to pull SLU to within seven of the lead early in the second half, but Vermont responded with a mini-run of its own to re-establish the double-digit lead.
Freshmen Curcic and Medley combined for an 8-0 SLU run later in the half, but it wasn't enough to get SLU over the hump.
Saint Louis Coach Travis Ford - "We played against a very good team today and got beat by a very good team.
That's as well connected a team as I've seen in awhile. They play really, really well together. Very connected, have a lot of weapons. We weren't a very good team today and I don't know many areas where we succeeded today. Give them all the credit. Vermont causes a lot of problems on the defensive end…I looked down at the stat sheet, I don't know how we scored 68. It sure didn't feel like it. They're [Vermont] a good team every game I see. We weren't very good today and they had a lot to do with it." (On the defense) "I thought we came out very flat with not the energy we needed and we couldn't score. We were hoping to be able to score and press a little bit. We were weary that we had played less than 24 hours ago. How they got their threes is no different than how we thought they were going to try and get them…. They're a difficult team to guard. The way they move the ball, the way they pass it, the way they shoot it…. You got to be able to score a few points with some consistency to play with Vermont. I don't care who they play, because they're going to score a few points. They're gonna get hot at some point, we just let them stay hot for pretty much the whole game."
Saint Louis Guard Gibson Jimerson - "We emphasized the three a lot. Obviously, we knew that they shot a lot of them and made a lot of them. I think we were hugged up a little bit and they took that opportunity to drive - not even just moves, just straight line drives. They were posting us up, they were getting mismatches. I think they noticed that we were really trying to take the three away so they started driving and we had to adjust, but they were still able to find guys. They were able to get by us."
Quotes courtesy of Myrtle Beach Invitational Media Operations
