Saluki Men’s Basketball snaps 14-game losing streak at Northern Iowa with 56-53 win

By Tom Weber 

CEDAR FALLS, Iowa — The streak is over. Southern Illinois won at Northern Iowa for the first time since 2002, beating the Panthers, 56-53, after the Salukis suddenly caught fire from 3-point range at the McLeod Center on Thursday night.

After missing nine of their first 10 shots from 3-point, the Salukis (9-5, 1-0) made eight of their last 11 from long range. They also clamped down on the league’s premier center, Bennett Koch, holding him to five points on 2-of-8 shooting. The victory was SIU’s first in 12 tries at the McLeod Center and snapped a 14-game losing streak overall at UNI.

“I’d be a liar if I said it didn’t feel unbelievable,” beamed Saluki head coach Barry Hinson.

The shot that broke the ice for Southern and was a key turning point in the contest, was made by Marcus Bartley just before the end of the first half, and with his team trailing by six points. Bartley inbounded the ball to Jonathan Wiley with 5.6 seconds left, who promptly threw it back to Bartley for a trey from the left corner that cut UNI’s lead to 25-22 at intermission.

Bartley, who was questionable to play in the game due to a lower back strain, scored all 12 of his points on four 3-pointers. He caught fire during a critical four-minute stretch of the second half. Three-straight treys by Bartley turned a 35-30 deficit into a 39-35 SIU lead with 9:07 to go.

“I said at halftime, to paraphrase, do we have anybody that can step up and make a shot?” Hinson said.

Once Southern took the lead, it didn’t give it back. A swarming defense made life miserable for Koch, who committed four turnovers and played just 22 minutes. The 6-foot-10 senior was surrounded nearly every time he touched the ball, and he missed a handful of point-blank looks early that appeared to rattle him.

“They crowded the post and I think we needed to do a better job of getting it out of there sooner and stretching the floor,” said UNI head coach Ben Jacobson. “Bennett was trying so hard to score and there were two or three guys around him.”

Southern’s leading scorer on the night was Kavion Pippen, who recorded 14 points on 6-of-12 shooting, as the Panthers elected not to double-team the 6-foot-10 center.

Northern Iowa played without the league’s top 3-point shooter, Spencer Haldeman, who missed the game with a back injury. He was shooting 50 percent from three on the season, and in his absence, UNI connected on just 5-of-20 from downtown.

Meanwhile, Southern found the range in the second half as seven of their 12 baskets came from deep. They didn’t all come from Bartley, either. During one clutch sequence, Bartley shot an air ball and Sean Lloyd saved it from going out of bounds. The ball landed in the hands of Tyler Smithpeters, who drained a triple to beat the buzzer and put SIU up, 42-38.

After Northern Iowa cut the deficit to 47-45 on a layup by Klint Carlson, it was Aaron Cook‘s turn to shine. Again with the shot clock almost about to expire, he hit an off-balance 3-pointer to make it 50-45. The final dagger was a 3-pointer by Armon Fletcher that bounced high off the iron and fell through to make it 55-48 with 58 seconds to go.

Hinson credited Bartley’s 3-point barrage with opening the floodgates for his teammates.

“What it did was allow everybody else to have confidence to make a three,” Hinson said. “It was a confidence boost we really needed.”

The Panthers (8-5, 0-1) lost their third-straight game but entered the contest with the league’s best RPI because of their strength of schedule and several marquee wins.

“It took us a long time to really get anything going on offense, and unfortunately, I think that kind of set the mood for the entire night,” Jacobson said. “I didn’t think we had enough bounce in our step, enough of an edge to us, considering we were at home to open the conference season. When those two things are missing, this can happen to you and it did tonight.”

The Salukis opened conference play with a victory for just the second time in the last eight seasons. They are also expecting to add forward Thik Bol to the mix this weekend versus Drake, as the senior shot blocker has been cleared to practice and play.

“There’s no team in college basketball that’s been through what we’ve been through this year — none,” Hinson said. “We just keep talking about continue to be tough. I thought tonight we showed a lot of toughness.”

Link to the Box Score

http://siusalukis.com/boxscore.aspx?id=8025&path=mbball