The Billikids gave us quite a ride during the 2010 season. Entering the season with just freshmen and sophomores, the Bills were picked to finish near the bottom of the Atlantic 10 Conference. For me, I was just hoping to accomplish a winning record and hopefully get a home game for the first round of the Atlantic 10 Conference Tournament, then get ready to roll in 2011. Instead, this resilient group of youngsters found themselves in contention for the A-10 title late in the season.

  It turned out to be a wonderful season as the Billikids finished with 23 victories and wound up fourth in the rugged Atlantic 10. Guard Kwamain Mitchell was named to the All-Atlantic 10 Second Team while freshman Cody Ellis was named to the A-10 All-Rookie Team. Sophomore Willie Reed earned Honorable Mention honors after a breakout season in which he set the new single-season record for blocked shots. Sophomore Kyle Cassity became the defensive stopper and glue for this young, emerging team. Sophomore Brian Conklin was an enforcer on the court and an A-10 All-Academic Team selection off the court.

  We were also thrilled by the enthusiasm of freshman Christian Salecich, the quickness and 3-point shooting of freshman guard Justin Jordan, the freakish athleticism of freshman Jon Smith, the toughness and persistence of redshirt freshman Femi John, the leadership of injured junior guard Paul Eckerle, the physical toughness of freshman Cory Remekun and the hard work and dedication of freshman Darrin Young.

  Congratulations to head coach Rick Majerus, his assistants Porter Moser, Alex Jensen, Chris Harriman, Tony Young and Matt Gordon and the rest of the staff for molding this young, inexperienced group into an excellent, competitive college basketball team.

  The 2010 has created a lot of excitement about the future of the SLU program. With everyone returning next year as well as the addition of talented recruits Mike McCall, Dwayne Evans and Rob Loe, everyone is looking forward to next season.

   However, before we start moving towards next year, I must spend some time on what I witnessed this year, which was remarkable. There were so many great memories to enjoy throughout the season. Here are my own personal Top 10 most memorable moments from the 2009-2010 season of Saint Louis University Basketball. They are in no particular order, but I loved them all.

  I’d love to hear what you top memory of the 2010 season was. You can write your thoughts in the comments section below.

  *Bank on Kwamain: In our biggest game of the season to date, Dayton came to the Chaifetz Arena for a showdown on Feb. 13. The Flyers had just beaten Xavier by 25 points and Charlotte by 28, so they were on a real roll. They jumped on us as well as they built a 14-point halftime lead. We managed to battle back to cut the deficit to three points in the closing seconds. After UD’s Chris Williams missed a free throw with 26 seconds left, we had a chance to tie the game. We couldn’t find a open look as we feverishly passed the ball around the perimeter. The ball finally found sophomore guard Kwamain Mitchell who launched a 30-footer with Dayton’s 6’8” athlete Chris Wright in his face. Mitchell’s miracle shot banked in, sending the game into overtime and the 10,000+ blue-clad Billiken fans into a frenzy. It also sent Dr. Richard Chaifetz, the namesake of our home arena, running on to the floor in sheer joy. The Bills managed to pull out a dramatic double-overtime victory thanks to Kwamain’s heroics.

  *Rick goes Hi-Tech: In the second round of the College Basketball Invitational, the Bills were locked in a double-overtime struggle with Wisconsin-Green Bay of the Horizon League. Late in the game, Green Bay guard Bryquis Perine drives to the basket while closely guarded by our freshman guard Christian Salecich. Christian cuts off Perine’s path to the basket, forcing him to push off Salecich and knock him to the floor. The whistle blows and we all anticipate a offensive foul on Perine. Instead, the official calls a blocking foul on Christian, which sends all of us into orbit. My broadcast partner Bob Ramsey lets loose with his signature, “THAT’S THE WORST CALL I’VE EVER SEEN!” call while the crowd booed lustily.

  However, the highlight of the scene came from head coach Rick Majerus and Assistant Sports Information Director Brian Kunderman. Rick is definitely old-school, so he doesn’t have much use for technology, computers and stuff like that. Until this night.

  Insenced by the blocking foul called against Christian, an enraged Rick heads towards the bench, stops by the table and takes Kunderman’s computer and starts slamming it up and down on the table. Meanwhile, Brian is frantically trying to hold on to his computer for dear life while trying to wrest it away from Rick before its gets broken into a million pieces. Even in the most heated situations of a competitive game, it’s always good to have a little laugh.

  *Willie! Willie! Willie!: Sophomore forward Willie Reed has been a favorite of the “Blue Crew” student section from the moment he set foot on SLU’s campus. If you’re a SLU fan, it’s no secret that Willie struggles mightily from the free throw line. Late in the season, the “Blue Crew” came up with an very unorthodox way to try to help Willie with his free throw problems. Whenever Willie stepped to the charity stripe, the student section would start chanting Willie’s name over and over again in a great show of support. Normally, when the player from the home team goes to the free throw line, the crowd is usually silent so the player can concentrate. However, when a visiting player goes to the line, that’s when the students let her rip in an effort to distract the shooter. However, desparate times sometimes call for desparate measures. The students chanted Willie with all of their hearts and suprisingly, Willie responded by making some free throws. I must admit I’d never seen anything like it before in all of my years of watching basketball.

  *Kwamain channels John Havlichek: Kwamain Mitchell thrilled Billikens fans all season long with big plays in clutch situations. Most will remember all of the big shots he hit in prime-time, but his biggest play of the season may have come on the defensive end. In our second-round CBI game against Green Bay, we were really up against it near the end of regulation. We were trailing 55-53 in the closing seconds when Cody Ellis drove to the basket and missed a short jumper. Willie Reed tipped the ball in, but the basket was waved off because the official ruled that Cody had pulled on the net, thus nullifying a game-tying basket with about 30 seconds left. Our season appeared dead in the water.

  Kwamain had other ideas. Coach Majerus put the full court pressure on in an effort to get a quick steal or a foul. Kwamain delivered the goods. He jumped in front of the inbounds pass and dived out of bounds while flicking the ball backwards to Willie, who was standing alone under the basket. Willie laid the ball in the basket to tie the game and force overtime. Kwamain’s steal was reminiscent of John Havlichek’s famous last-second steal in the 1960 Eastern Conference playoffs to seal the Boston Celtics’ Game 7 victory over the Philadelphis Warriors with Johnny Most’s famous “Havlichek Steals the Ball!!” call on the play.

  *Cody’s Arrival: The fortunes of Billiken basketball changed on Jan. 1 when standout Australian recruit Cody Ellis’ plane landed on American soil. The Bills had just completed their non-conference season with a dreadful loss at Bowling Green. The only thing that made the Bowling Green experience palatable was the fact that the 6’8” Ellis had finally jumped through all of the hoops and cleared all of the hurdles that the NCAA Clearninghouse had thrown in front of him to gain his eligibility. There was a little talk about Cody redshirting because he had missed so much, but the young man would have none of it. He was ready to play, right now. And play he did. His combination of size, talent and perimeter shooting changed the entire outlook of the season. He made the game easier for everyone else. As a result, a team that was picked to finish near the bottom of the Atlantic 10 Conference wound up finishing in fourth place. Cody averaged 11 points and six rebounds a game while providing a nice 3-point shot before fatigue set in. And he did it without the benefit of summer conditioning, preseason practice or a nonconference schedule. Cody basically parachuted himself into the lineup at the beginning of a rugged conference schedule with little preparation. All he did was make the Atlantic 10 All-Freshman Team. It was a remarkable debut season under the circumstances.

  *Steel City Adventure: On Jan. 13, my broadcast partner Bob Ramsey and I boarded a 10 a.m. flight to Pittsburgh to broadcast the SLU-Duquesne game. It was a routine flight on a routine day that we’ve gone through many times together for nearly two decades. On this day, it was all different. We were on the runway and ready to take off when the pilot announced that there were a few problems with the plane that would have to be looked at. We headed back to the gate, where we got off the plane and went back inside the airport. We were slated to take off on another fight at 3 p.m. No problem. We’ll still get to Pittsburgh and the arena in plenty of time for the game. However, that flight never got to St. Louis. It was re-routed and eventually cancelled. Meanwhile, our original plane was still in the hangar getting worked on. This was now getting serious. It was nearly 4 p.m. and we had no flight to Pittsburgh on tap. Bob made the necessary calls to everyone to let them know of our situation. We even considered going home and missing the game altogether. We finally boarded the flight at 4:45 p.m., but we still considered just going home since we were going to miss part of the game. We decided to stay with it and our flight took off at 5 p.m. We knew were would be late to the game, so it was arranged that the first part of the game could be heard on our flagship station, 101-ESPN, but with Duquesne’s broadcast team of Ray Goss and George Van Benko on the call. We landed in Pittsburgh at 7 p.m. (game time), sprinted through the airport and caught a cab. He whisked us to the arena where we rolled in about eight minutes into the game. We thought about waiting until halftime before we went on the air, but we decided to go on the air right away. As it turned out, the game went into double-overtime and the Billikens enjoyed one of their biggest victories of the season. I was so glad that Rammer and I stayed the course and made the trip. After the game, we spent the rest of the evening in the hotel restaurant with the coaching staff in a celebratory mood after the big victory. The trouble we went through to get there did not seem to matter anymore.

  *The Mark Cuban of St. Louis: The Billikens were 18-4 at home this season and a big reason why was that the Chaifetz Arena became a great place to watch a game. The atmosphere at a SLU game was one of the best in the Atlantic 10 Conference from the band, the student section and the rabid Bills fans who took their support to a raucous new level. It was a fantastic sight to see. Perhaps, the highlight of SLU games was the presence of Dr. Richard Chaifetz, the namesake of the building, sitting front and center at halfcourt. He was one of the most vocal and enthusiastic SLU fans in the building. His love and emotional devotion to the Billikens was clearly evident. He wore it on his sleeves. He cheered on his Billikens with great gusto, chastised referees and even came on to the court on occasion in a display of sheer excitement. On our radio broadcasts, Rammer and I started calling him Mark Cuban, referring to the outspoken and enthusiastic owner of the Dallas Mavericks who happens to be their most vocal cheerleader at the games.. There was no doubt what side Dr. Chaifetz was on when you saw him at a Billikens’ game.

  *The Dayton Experience: Our last regular season game was a road game at Dayton, a team what had lost only once at home during the past two seasons. The road trip to Ohio was fun as Rammer and I rode the bus with SLU administrators and boosters. On the ride to Dayton, we watched the first SLU-Dayton game as well as the movie, Wedding Crashers. When we got to the hotel, we ate dinner together and had a great time.

 We were playing good basketball late in the season, but we knew that winning at UD would be a tall order. Going into the game, we were still in fourth place in the A-10 and holding on for dear life. Earlier that day, Richmond had won at Charlotte, which clinched fourth place for us and a first-round bye in the A-10 Tournament. The game at Dayton was basically meaningless for us. Plus, it was their Senior Night and a sellout crowd was on hand to celebrate one of Dayton’s most successful senior classes. Everythng pointed towards a solid Dayton victory.

  What actually did happen turned out to be one of our most impressive shooting exhibitions of the season. Kwamain got the ball rolling by hitting two early 3-pointers. He was joined by Cody, Kyle Cassity, Christian and Justin Jordan. We hit seven of our first eight 3-pointers and built a 15-point lead in front of a stunned Dayton crowd. When the halftime buzzer sounded, the usually supportive Dayton crowd actually booed the Flyers off the floor. I could not believe it. As we expected, Dayton made a big run and actually cut the lead to 58-56 in the closing minutes. The sellout crowd was now off the chains after Chris Johnson’s 3-pointer cut the lead to two points. Kwamain responded with a driving layup, then Christian supplied the big dagger with a 3-pointer from the left wing to give us a seven-point lead and the breathing room we needed for our biggest victory of the season.

  *Planes, Trains and Automobiles: The February road swing to Philadelphia for two games was truly one for the ages. The kids were in Philly to play LaSalle on a Saturday and St. Joseph’s on a Tuesday. A record snowstorm had hit the City of Brotherly Love on that Friday, which made travel impossible. Luckily, the team had left on Thursday, so they got to Philly two days before the game. However, Rammer and I were no so lucky. Our Friday flight to Philly was cancelled, so we missed the game, which the Bills won 68-65 after trailing by 12 points. We managed to get into Philly on Monday for Tuesday’s game at St. Joe’s, but another snowstorm was on the way. We called another thrilling SLU victory that night, but the second snowstorm had already started during the game. That’s when we got word that our flight from Philly on Wednesday would be cancelled as well as any Thursday flights. The earliest that we could get back to St. Louis would be on Friday. We were having none of that. As soon as we got back to the hotel, we looked at other possible flights. Then, we turned our attention to the trains. On Wednesday morning, we hopped on a train to Pittsburgh. We spent the entire day on a train across the state. Making the trip more pleasurable was the presence of former Xavier and Virginia coach Pete Gillen, who was doing A-10 games for television. We spent much of the trip talking to Coach Gillen about the good ol’ days of the SLU-Xavier rivalry. We rolled into Pittsburgh at about 11 p.m. and checked into our hotel about about midnight. We got about five hours of sleep and we were up bright and early to take a 7 p.m. trip back to St. Louis. Meanwhile, the team remained in Philly for a total of nine days before got back home on Friday.

  *Darrin Young: Our last game of the season ended in a loss to Virginia Commonwealth in the championship series of the College Basketball Invitational. One of the highlights of that game was the play of Darrin Young, a walk-on freshman guard from Kirkwood High. By the end of the season, we were down to eight scholarship players because of all of the injuries. The team was running basically on fumes by the time the championship series started. Our backcourt depth was especially depleted. In the second game of the series, Darrin finally got the call to play. Up until then, he had only played a few minutes during the season and that was in mop-up duty. Now, he was asked to play some meaningful minutes in a championship series. What Darrin did during his 11 minutes that night was truly inspirational. Darrin scored five points, grabbed a rebound, hustled to recover a loose ball and really gave us a lift when the team was really struggling to hold off VCU in the second half. He hit two free throws, then came back to score on a 3-point play when he took the ball right at a VCU player who was nearly a foot taller. The crowd roared their approval as they showed their appreciation for what D.Y. was able to do. It was phenomenal to watch D.Y. in action that night. As a walk-on, he works just as hard as everyone else, but rarely gets the chance to shine in the spotlight. That is the life of a walk-on. However, when his name was called, he was physically and mentally ready to play. And he delivered some great ball at a time when his team really needed it. It was truly a special moment during the season.

  *What were your favorite moments of the 2010 SLU season. Let me know in the comments section below.