Saluki Men’s Basketball hosts Evansville on Wednesday

General admission tickets are on-sale for $10 and K9 Crew Trick Dog Show will perform at halftime.

SIU head coach Barry Hinson met with the media on Tuesday after the team’s morning practice.

You showed the last four minutes against Drake you can be a really good defensive team. How do you get them to play harder for 30 minutes rather than five?

The question was asked for a radio show about the inconsistency of this ball team, but let’s look at the inconsistencies of our health, too. We’ve just been a roller coaster with what’s been going on with our team health-wise. Since (we got back from) Vegas, we haven’t been able to practice 5-on-5. If we had a 4-on-4 tournament, we’d be really good at it. I think our inconsistencies are based on facts. When we get healthy and we get everybody knowing what our rotations are going to be, who we’re going to play, I think we’ll be a much better ball club. 

The thing that bothered me the other night was that we let our offense dictate once again what we did defensively. We also let bad news dictate how we came out with energy. We’ve got to be beyond that. Nobody cares. The people in this area and this region care, but nobody outside this region cares. Matter of fact, I told them today, there’s nine teams that hope everyone of you are sick. There’s nine teams that hope every one of you has a broke nose or a knee surgery. The bottom line is, it’s just gonna be a grind, and you gotta make up your mind and you gotta get through it. 

We specifically need somebody to step forward as a leader, because coaches can’t get their team up night-in and night-out. I’m watching a football game and a guy with no hand literally changed the game of UCF over Auburn, literally by himself. Then I watched a quarterback last night where the announcers continually talked about how everybody based their energy off of this quarterback (Baker Mayfield) and how he played the game. We’ve got that potential. I think we have three guys right now that can do that for our basketball team. I think those are Sean Lloyd, Marcus (Bartley) and Aaron Cook. They’ve got to take hold and take stock of doing that. 

What does Evansville do in the lane to get their guys open?

They set a lot of screens, but they’re mainly inside the arc. Their stats just blow me away. Ryan Taylor has played half of the games that we have played but yet he has more shots than anybody on our basketball team with the exception of Kavion Pippen. He’s got 140 shot attempts in eight games. That’s an amazing stat to me. (Blake) Simmons has almost as many shot attempts, twice as many as anybody on the basketball team. They’re just a good basketball team. I just told Mike Reis, when’s the last time that our fans could come in and watch a game where somebody is No. 1 in the country in something? This is the best 3-point field goal team we’ve seen. Obviously, the facts stand by it. This is a huge game. They’ve won the last four times they’ve been in this building.

How do you make Taylor uncomfortable when you’re guarding him man-to-man?

I don’t know if you can make him uncomfortable. It’s hard to make guys uncomfortable that have a green light that shoot 17-20 times a game, because they have the backing of the staff and the players that if they miss two or three or four in a row it doesn’t matter. They just keep shooting. He plays with a lot of comfort and confidence based on that. I don’t know if you ever take him out of his comfort zone. I think you have to do the best job of contesting every shot.

It seems like every year they have big-dog scorer. Is that their philosophy?

Their whole offense is based around the reading of one guy. It was (D.J.) Ballentine for four years, now it’s Ryan Taylor, and there will be somebody to go into that mode again. But with that being said, now all of the sudden you’ve got (Boo) Gibson and (Dru) Smith and you’ve got SImmons — all these guys can shoot threes. They’ve done a good job of playing off that. They’ve surrounded these guys with shooters. 

What kind of difference does Smith make for them?

I think that’s the thing you have to be really leery of. These guys have had similar to what we’ve had. I don’t think they’ve had the number of injuries, but they certainly had Duke where they had all three starters out, that didn’t help. I think you have to throw the Duke game out with the skewed part of the statistics. Obviousl,y with what he does, he makes everyone around him better. They’ve got great complementary players. The thing that Marty (Simmons) has always done a great job of, everyone always knows and understands their role, which is pretty impressive.