#714 ASA FREE PLAY ON St Louis -4 over George Mason, Thursday at 2 PM ET - George Mason is coming off a tight win yesterday over Richmond while St Louis was resting and has been off since beating Dayton last Friday. The Billikens (tied for 2nd place) finished 1 game ahead of George Mason (5th place) in A10 play despite playing the much tougher schedule. STL played the 3rd most difficult slate in the conference while the Patriots have faced the easiest schedule in the league. Despite the disparity in conference schedule strength, the Billikens averaged 1.07 PPP offensively while allowing 1.02 PPP defensively for a +0.05 PPP differential. Mason was dead even in PPP differential averaging only 0.99 PPP on offense and allowing the same defensively. As you can see STL has a fairly significant advantage offensively. They rank 2nd in the Atlantic 10 in offensive efficiency, eFG%, and 3 point FG%. Meanwhile, the Patriots rank 11th in offensive efficiency and 9th in both overall FG% and 3 point FG%. They also rank dead last in FT% hitting only 65% as a team from the stripe. They only played each of the top 4 teams in the conference per KenPom (VCU, Dayton, St Louis, and Duquesne) one time each this year and finished 1-3 SU in those games. In their lone meeting this year St Louis squeezed out a 1 point win but we think they take this by more than a possession. Lay it on Thursday.