Until Thursday, the Saint Louis University men’s basketball team hadn’t lost back-to-back games all season and they couldn’t have picked a worse time to do it. After dropping their regular-season finale to LaSalle last Saturday, SLU suffered a 56-37 defeat by St. Joseph’s in their first game of the Atlantic 10 Conference Tournament yesterday.

The Billikens were down 7-0 before they scored and trailed 33-14 at the half. SLU shot just 31 percent from the field. They were led by junior Ian Vouyoukas, who scored 15 points and grabbed 10 rebounds.

With the loss they dropped to 16-13 and will now have to rely on an invitation from the NIT to extend their season.