The spirit of Saint Louis: how a lack of ego is fueling the 24th-ranked Billikens

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Robbie Avila knows it sounds like a cliche, and maybe it is. For Avila and everyone else on No. 24 Saint Louis, though, it also happens to be true.

“We have no egos on this team,” the perpetually goggled, occasionally googled — feel free to search “Larry Nerd,” “Cream Abdul-Jabbar” or “Steph Blurry” — senior center said after the Billikens improved to 18-1 with a harder-than-it-needed-to-be 81-77 win over Duquesne on Tuesday. “We know that if we are going to be successful, it's going to take everybody.”

Something the 6-foot-10 big man with a shooting guard's touch and a point guard's vision understood when he sat down with Saint Louis coach Josh Schertz after his first season with the Billikens ended with a first-round loss in the NIT.

"Look," Schertz told Avila, who followed his coach to Saint Louis after they guided Indiana State to the Missouri Valley Conference regular-season crown and the NIT finals in 2024. “This is our NIL (name, image and likeness) budget. This is what percentage I can give you and still have enough left over to put a team around you that's talented enough to reach the NCAA Tournament.”

Avila, without skipping a beat, told Schertz, “I'm in.”

“It wasn’t a ‘Well I need more,’ or ‘I need to get paid this’ or ‘I could go I leverage this or hold you hostage,’” Schertz said. “It’s just sets a great tone because really nobody else can complain when your best player ... is sacrificing minutes and shots.”

Just not victories. Never victories. And that's kind of the point of all this, right?

A selfless approach

Sure, Avila has earned the right to “get his," if that's what he wanted. He averaged 17.3 points, 6.9 rebounds and 4.0 assists — the most by a post player in the country — a year ago. He could have told Schertz, “Give me the ball or I'm out of here.”

Only that's not the way Avila — whom Schertz said values winning as much as any player he's ever coached — is wired.

“The only thing I haven’t done so far in college is, you know, make it to March Madness,” Avila said. “You know, we were just short sophomore year (at Indiana State). And so I’m going to do whatever it takes to make it that far.”

And if that means having the ball in his hands less and sitting on the bench more to provide opportunities for others on perhaps one of the deepest — and certainly among the most democratic — rosters in the country, so be it.

Saint Louis is the only team in the nation with six players averaging at least 10 points. On Monday, junior guard Kellen Thames became the third different Billiken — none of them named “Avila” — to be named Atlantic 10 Player of the Week.

“If I need to score 20 one night, maybe that’s what it takes,” said Avila, whose scoring average (12.8), rebounds (4.3) and minutes played (25.3) are all at their lowest since his freshman season at Indiana State in 2023. “But if I need to be a facilitator or a rebound or something like that, great. And that’s not just me. I think it’s the entire team that has that same type of mentality.”

A mentality that has carried Saint Louis back into the Top 25 for the first time in five years. The Billikens celebrated their return to the polls by fending off a late surge from Duquesne to extend their winning streak to 12. A victory on Friday night at St. Bonaventure would match the 1993-94 team for the best 20-game start in the program's 110-year history.

“We're writing our own story,” said Thames, a St. Louis native who is the lone remaining holdover from the 2023-24 team that went 13-20 and led to Travis Ford's dismissal. “There's a lot of hype around (us). ... The sky's the limit for us.”

Thames knows how it usually goes these days. A new coach comes in and often wants to bring in his own guys. All it took was one meeting, however, for Thames to be put at ease.

“Schertz recruits personality,” said Thames, who is averaging 10.6 points and 5.3 rebounds a year after being limited to 17 games because of a mysterious and relentless cramping issue that threatened to end his career. “He brings in high-character people. Yeah, everybody wants to do well, but everybody here understands that when the team does well, it's good for everyone.”

It helps that Schertz runs a system predicated not on set plays but empowering his players to read the defense and make their own decisions on where the ball should go. It's not a coincidence that the Billikens lead the A-10 in assists and assist-to-turnover ratio, one of the reasons their scoring margin (25 points per game) is also tops in the country.

Meet me in Saint Louis

It's an unselfish approach developed by a coach who is, by nature, unselfish. Schertz spent 13 years turning Lincoln Memorial in Harrogate, Tennessee, into a Division II power. The Railsplitters reached the NCAA tournament nine times during his tenure, reaching the championship game twice.

Willingly sticking around a decade-plus in a town of 4,400 tucked hard against the Virginia border doesn't exactly fit the “young coach on the rise” blueprint. Schertz, however, loved what he was building and was unwilling to jeopardize that for a Division I gig that was considered a step up in prestige only.

“They were always in situations where I would have made less money and been in a situation where I didn’t feel like it was a great job,” he said. “I wasn’t going leave what I had.”

Indiana State finally lured Schertz to the next level in 2021, and it took all of three seasons for him to guide the Sycamores to just their third MVC regular-season title. A deep run in the NIT that made Avila a viral sensation followed before Saint Louis beckoned with an opportunity to take another step up the ladder.

Avila followed Schertz west, confident the success they enjoyed at Indiana State was repeatable. After a somewhat bumpy and injury-marred 2024-25, Schertz spent the offseason finding depth pieces in the portal.

The results have often looked like what the Billikens put on display on Tuesday night. Avila, Dion Brown and Trey Green had 14 points. Brady Dunlap had 11. Thames chipped in 10 and Saint Louis survived despite a somewhat sloppy night in which the Billikens turned it over 16 times and almost frittered away a 17-point second-half lead.

In the end, however, they held on to improve to 6-0 in the A-10 and remain one of three unbeaten teams in the league. They're well aware that the attention they're generating will put a target on their back. That's fine with them. They want the smoke.

“You want to be the team to catch,” Avila said. “You don’t want to be the team that’s second or third, catching up to somebody. I’m an ultimate competitor. I want that target on my back because that means we’re going to get everybody’s best shot and I think that's the biggest compliment you can get as a team.”

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