Saint Louis was looking to complete the biggest win of its season. The Billikens men’s basketball team has been playing brilliant defense since starting Atlantic 10 conference play, and their 78-69 win over VCU on Tuesday night continued that trend. The Rams have been the best team in the conference this year; their offensive philosophy involves banging inside and making layups. The Billikens didn't really let them do either, as VCU shot just 32.8 percent on Tuesday; they ended up taking 31 threes and made just five.
The Billikens have been solid on defense all year, and a brick wall in conference play. Opponents are shooting just 21.3 percent from distance against them. The Billikens are coming around offensively, too, and there's reason to believe they could get even better; first-year coach Josh Schertz had the best-shooting offense in the country at Indiana State last year. But it’s on the other end where things are getting really interesting. Isaiah Swope and Robbie Avila, who followed Schertz from Indiana State to St. Louis, have stepped up their contribution on the defensive end.
VCU is still 16-5 overall, tied with St. Louis and George Mason atop the conference at 6-2, and has just one bad loss all year, back in November on a neutral court to a Seton Hall team that is now 5-16. The Rams have sharpshooter Joe Bamisile, and are still probably the best team in the conference despite losing on Tuesday.
OK, enough of this. You want to know about the wild, sprawling fan fight that happened near the end of the game. Well, sure, that was pretty interesting too, and the kind of brawl you don’t often see in college basketball. You don’t have to take my word for it, either. It's what announcer Tom McCarthy said during the broadcast: “You don’t often see this in college basketball.”
From the footage, the brawl appears to have been between VCU fans in the seats right behind the bench and Saint Louis fans sitting behind them. That means the VCU fans were likely associated with the team in some way, as that’s who usually gets those kinds of seats. The Saint Louis fans were, presumably, just regular ol’ fans of the Billikens.
OK, OK, you just want to see more footage. Got it.
It took a while for security to get the fight at Chaifetz Arena under control. “Older SLU fan seemed to have a fair amount of blood on him,” wrote KSDK-TV sports reporter Corey Miller. The station reported that cops were not called, and no arrests were made.
My favorite coverage of this brawl comes from KMOV-TV (“First Alert 4”), which I will partially transcribe: “What is going on?! A wild brawl! … The flight between SLU and VCU fans getting national attention this morning. Security obviously had to step in—they were there immediately… Just trying to figure out who’s mad at who in this, not clear how it started. Let’s circle back to the point of it is for those players to be there, it’s for them to compete against each other.”
The real star of these videos, for me, is the arena DJ. Any fan fight this big is going to be notable, but this one was made so much more enjoyable for having Icona Pop’s “I Love It” as a soundtrack.
