by Tom Weber – siusalukis.com

CARBONDALE, Ill. — Southern Illinois hosts sister school SIUE on Wednesday night at SIU Arena in the 10th meeting between the schools. The Salukis lead the all-time series versus SIUE, 8-1, including a 4-1 mark at SIU Arena. The Cougars’ lone win in the series came in Carbondale on Dec. 9, 2015. In that game, the Cougars scored a 76-74 upset and snapped a seven-game losing streak. SIUE overcame 21 turnovers by connecting on 10-of-16 from 3-point range.

Saluki Guard Aaron Cook in SIUC’s loss against SIUE last year. (siusalukis.com)

Last year, SIU beat SIUE, 101-83, at the Vadalabene Center. Sean O’Brien nearly had a triple-double with 22 points, nine rebounds and nine assists. In the first half, Southern shot 73.3 percent (22-of-30) from the field with 15 assists and two turnovers. The Salukis led by as many as 31 points.

This game will mark the 18th time Hinson has faced an Ohio Valley Conference team since becoming head coach at SIU in 2012. He has an 11-6 record in previous games, including a 4-1 mark against SIUE.

Dawg Bites
•Sixty-two percent of SIU’s point production comes from two-point baskets — that ranks fifth-highest in the nation.
•SIU has allowed 50+ points in a half in back-to-back games for the first time since December of 2000 vs. SEMO (54) and UIC (52).
•Tyler Smithpeters leads the team in free throws made (7) and attempted (10).
•Beginning with SIUE, the Salukis play six of their next seven games at home.
•G Marcus Bartley (6-5, 193, Jr.) was diagnosed with a broken bone in his right wrist on Oct. 25 and is expected to miss six weeks.
•F Thik Bol (6-8, 202, Sr.) had knee surgery on Nov. 3 and is expected to miss approximately six weeks.
•SIU has gone 86-consecutive games with at least one 3-point field goal and 994-consecutive games with at least one free throw (dating back to 1986).
•Hinson is 42-34 overall in non-conference games at SIU and 21-16 at during the month of November.
•The Salukis rank 94th in the nation in two defensive categories — blocked shots per game (4.3) and steals (7.5).

Head coach Barry Hinson met with media prior to Tuesday’s practice.

So Marcus Bartley is definitely out for this Wednesday and Saturday you think?

Neither one of the players (Bartley or Thik Bol) will play in the next two games. I think we’re still looking at the two-week mark.

Are you encouraged about getting them back? 

I thought the medical report yesterday was extremely favorable. All along, the average for Thik’s (injury) was 43 days and that could very well still be the case, and Marcus is still having some pain with some type of movement. If you remember your classes in kinesiology, I remember when I was at Oklahoma State, supination/pronation gives him a little bit of an issue with rotation, but we’ll just see. I  just go by what our medical staff tells us and they were rather excited yesterday and released them to shoot some. I think that’s really productive.

The one place where you really seem to miss Michael (Rodriguez) is late-game shot clock, what has to get better? 

I think this is one of the things, where, one, execution with guys that haven’t been in that spot very much, and we haven’t. The guys if you noticed in the last-second situations, almost every time that the two people that are involved in it that are in the shot clock plays are guys that have not played an extensive period of time. With that being said, I think it was really encouraging. I thought Aaron Cook was just outstanding and how he handled the shot clock at Murray. We just didn’t handle the end of the result of his passes very good. I think if you guys if you listen to the radio show, we had 12 missed layups and six of those were uncontested.  So you got to find a way to finish those baskets.

Armon (Fletcher) has been struggling lately or early season injury and then struggling to shoot the ball. How much is injury versus how much he just needs to improve shooting the ball?

I don’t think the injury is affecting his shooting whatsoever and that’s my opinion. I think you’d have to ask Armon for his opinion. Armon right now needs to quit worrying about offense and worry about defense and rebounding and then the game will eventually come to him. That’s one of the things that we talked about with Aaron Cook and Sean Lloyd going in the last game and we continue to talk to all of our team about, lose yourself defensively, and all the offense will take care of itself. Our defense has to get better, we’re not even close to what our defensive numbers should be and that’s certainly been an emphasis in practice. One of the reasons that we’re not shooting the ball well is we’re taking contested threes. We had 21 threes at Murray and 13 were contested.

What are opponents doing to make it difficult for Kavion Pippen to touch the ball right now?

He’s a magnet right now and until you make shots, when you’re shooting 30% from the three, no one’s going to guard you out there. When you’re shooting 6-for-8 in the game, they’re going to guard you and they’re going to make sure that you make open shots. We’re going to be zoned tomorrow night, no doubt in my mind. Actually, I’m kind of excited about it to be honest. I think that we prepared for it. I know we’ll shoot the ball much better than what we have, but we know we’re going to see some zone and we’re going to see double teams on Kavion, and that’s not just tomorrow night, that’s a bunch for the future. Until we get those two guys back in the lineup, we’re going to see that quite often.

Can you open things up by the way you screen?

We’ve got to hit shots. You don’t get the ball inside when everybody’s guarding you. We have to have guys step up and make shots and and then I think the biggest thing for us right now is to be better selected and we will. I don’t think it’s a talent issue. I think it’s an execution issue and a mental issue. That’s what I think is the result of our shooting percentage.

Daniel Kinchen is a new player for them, what stands out when you watch him on film?

What stands out is if he touches the ball he’s going to shoot it. He is a prolific scorer and has one of the best green-lights of any player I’ve seen in college basketball and we have to be cognizant of him at all times. He’s shooting over 40% from the three, a player kind of like (Jonathan) Stark and we’re going to have to do a much better job on him than what we did it at Murray State. He is a score and we gotta pay attention to him.

By Tom Weber siusalukis.com

MURRAY, KY. — Murray State exploded for 50 points in the second half to rally from a six-point deficit and beat Southern Illinois, 81-73, on Saturday night at the CFSB Center.

Jonathan Stark led the Racers (3-1) with 27 points and eight assists. The 6-foot shooting guard dominated the action during the comeback with 17 points and six assists in the second half alone.

Sean Lloyd shoots over the top of a Murray State defender in last nights road loss at Murray. siusalukis.com

The Salukis (2-2) led by as many as eight during the first half but were out-scored, 18-8, in the final five minutes of the game. Sean Lloyd Jr. led SIU with a career-high 19 points and Kavion Pippen added 12 for his fourth-straight game in double figures.

Southern got off to a good start defensively, limiting the Racers to 2-of-10 shooting from 3-point in the first half and holding Stark to just 10 points. MSU head coach Matt McMahon moved Stark to the point guard spot in the second half, and he kick-started an offense that shot 55 percent from the field in the final 20 minutes, including 7-of-14 treys.

“I thought Coach (Barry ) Hinson did a good job — they were throwing some junk defenses at us — and I thought we adjusted well to it,” said McMahon. “We didn’t want to get too complicated, we just wanted to put Stark in some good positions. You see his 27 points and that will get a lot of attention, but a lot of the big plays were the assists in the second half.”

Southern Illinois bounced back from a 42-point loss at Louisville earlier in the week with a much more competitive showing. All eight players contributed multiple buckets on offense, and the team had a season-low seven turnovers.

“For our basketball team, it was how would we respond after what happened at Louisville, because we just quit at Louisville,” said Hinson. “We responded tonight. I think when we get these two starters back (Thik Bol, Marcus Bartley), we have a chance to be pretty good.”

Lloyd Jr. had 12 of his points in the first half, using his 6-foot-5, 210-pound frame to overpower smaller defenders for close-in looks. He also buried a couple of 3-pointers.

Point guard Aaron Cook was the engine that drove SIU’s offense — he had eight points, four assists and just one turnover.

“I thought it was the best game he’s played so far,” Hinson said. “I was so impressed with Aaron tonight. I thought he did a great job on their point guard, and he got us into offense. Everybody else was sped up, but not Aaron.”

The game ultimately turned in Murray’s favor when Stark and Shaq Buchanan hit back-to-back triples to put MSU up, 69-65, with 3:40 to go. Southern twice cut it to two points on driving layups by Lloyd Jr., but the Racers closed the game on an 8-2 run.

“I thought we looked like a team that hadn’t played in a week, we were a little sluggish in the first half, we let the ball stick on one side of the floor too much,” McMahon said. “I thought our offensive execution in the second half was really good. We moved the ball better, got some higher quality shots from three, and guys really stepped up and delivered.”

Buchanan was 2-for-3 from downtown and 6-foot-8 forward Terrell Miller also hit a couple and scored 16 points.

“We were trying to help on Miller, and Buchanan makes two threes on us,” Hinson said. “We knew Stark was going to get his points, and we talked at halftime about how we have to do a great job on the other guys.”

After playing three of their first four games on the road, the Salukis will play six of their next seven at home.

By Tom Weber siusalukis.com