Saint Louis placed a league-high four players on the Atlantic 10 Conference men’s basketball preseason All-Conference teams, the A-10 announced today at the start of the league’s annual Media Day at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Additionally, the Billikens were picked to finish second in the A-10 race. The All-Conference teams and the preseason poll were voted upon by the league’s 15 head coaches and media representatives in each A-10 market.
Yuri Collins was named to the A-10 preseason first team, while Gibson Jimerson and Javonte Perkins landed on the second team. Francis Okoro was a voted to the third team. Collins and Okoro were named to the five-man All-Defensive team.
Dayton was chosen as the preseason favorite to win the league with 22 first-place votes. SLU came in second with seven first-place votes. VCU, Loyola Chicago and George Mason rounded out the top five.
Collins was named first-team All-Conference after a stellar 2021-22 campaign that saw him lead the NCAA in total assists (267) and assists per game (7.9). Collins was also the Bills’ second-leading scorer with 11.1 ppg and led the team with 65 steals, the sixth-most in a single season by a SLU player in school history. He is the school’s all-time leader in career assists with 554 through just three seasons.
Jimerson was a third-team All-Conference choice last season after leading the Billikens with 16.3 ppg, third in the A-10. His 42-percent mark from 3-point range was fifth in the league, while his .826 shooting mark from the stripe ranked sixth. He buried 87 treys a year ago, which was tied for second for most 3s by a Billiken in a season in school history.
Perkins is back after missing all of last season due to a torn ACL suffered in the Billikens’ first exhibition game. In two years with the Bills, Perkins is averaging 15.9 ppg, good for 10th in school history. He was a second-team All-Conference selection in 2020-21 after leading the team with 17.1 ppg, and in 2019-20 was voted the A-10 Sixth Man of the Year after scoring a team-high 18.2 ppg in conference games.
Okoro’s first season with the Billikens in 2021-22 saw him lead the team and rank second in the A-10 in rebounding with 8.1 rpg. He averaged 12.0 ppg in conference games only, second on the Bills. He shot .588 from the field, third in the A-10 and sixth in a single season in SLU history. Okoro led SLU with 42 blocked shots.
