Salukis welcome Southeast Missouri State

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Justin Bocot took the shooter's mentality Tuesday as Southern Illinois University's men's basketball team prepared for Southeast Missouri State.

Bocot has missed 10 of his last 11 shots entering tonight's 7:07 contest with the Redhawks (0-9), but for a proven scorer, the task is the same in a slump. Keep firing away, and, eventually, the stroke will come back.

"Just keep working real hard, coming into the gym and shooting after practice, just keep working real hard trying to get my shot back," Bocot said after he was asked what he was doing to try to shake his two-game slump. "My shot hasn't been fallin', fallin' really, at all, so it's just really staying in the gym and getting lots of shots up."

Luckily, the Salukis (4-4) haven't completely required much offense from Bocot during their recent run back to the .500 mark. SIU has won four of its last six after dropping to 0-2 in mid-November. Bocot went 0-for-7 from the field in the Salukis' 75-61 win at Chicago State Saturday, but SIU got points from nine different players to earn its first true road win of the season.

Mamadou Seck put up 17 in his first start as a Saluki in Bocot's place. Carlton Fay and Gene Teague chipped in 12 apiece, despite playing with four fouls in the second half. SIU's depth has been a tremendous strength through its first eight games, and when Bocot's offense returns, the Salukis could become that much deeper.

"We stress to him to take good shots and play within the team concept. The biggest thing for him is him not feeling that he has to save the day," SIU coach Chris Lowery said. "We don't have to have anybody save the day, we just have to be consistent and make sure that we get a lot of touches inside and out. And when we do that then we'll get the 3s and the transition points."

SEMO has also stayed in some games with its bench, which has outscored the opposition's reserves five times, but is expected to be without two starters. Senior forward Cameron Butler and junior guard Nick Niemczyk are both expected to miss tonight's game, the Redhawks' sixth in the last 12 days. However, after SIU fell by 15 in its last home game, the Salukis are on high upset alert.

"The only thing I know about SEMO is they're 0-9, so, they're going to be hungry for a win," SIU guard John Freeman said. "We gotta go out and play ?em like they're 9-0. That's the main thing, just playing every team the same. I think if we bring out the same effort and intensity as we did against Purdue, we'll be fine."

 

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Salukis are who we'd thought they'd be



t's eight games into the Southern Illinois University basketball season and the Salukis are 4-4.

Depending on your perspective, .500 is: A.) A sign of the apocalypse; B.) A slight disappointment; or C.) About what you'd expect.

Anyone selecting "A" will never be swayed to view "B" or "C" as even remotely acceptable possibilities. I'd argue otherwise.

The Salukis should be 5-3 at this point. Three of the four losses have been to Illinois, Purdue and New Mexico. Looking at the schedule six weeks ago, there was no reason to expect the team would fare any better than 1-2 against that trio. The New Mexico game seemed a possibility, but defeating Illinois at Champaign or Purdue at a neutral site, seemed unlikely.

Granted, the Dawgs let the Northeastern game get away.

Given the make-up of this team, the Salukis can improve as the season wears on. Conversely, the composition of the team made expectations beyond a 5-3 start unrealistic.

This will drive the boo-birds crazy, but this is still a young team. Other than Carlton Fay and Justin Bocot, this team has little Division 1 experience. Gene Teague and Kendal Brown-Surles saw considerable action last year, but are still neophytes.

Saluki fans like to hearken back to the good old days of Darren Brooks, Randal Falker, Stetson Hairston, Tony Young and even Josh Warren.

There is a common thread among those players - advanced age. Brooks, Young, Falker and Warren had the benefit of a redshirt year. Hairston didn't redshirt, but he played a year at a prep school before enrolling at SIU.

Yes, Jamal Tatum, Kent Williams and Matt Shaw enjoyed outstanding careers without the benefit of a redshirt, but they were the exception rather than the rule.

The successful Saluki teams of the past decade won because they possessed a level of physical, and emotional, maturity that has been lacking the last few years.

The SIU coaching staff has tried to add instant maturity in the form of junior college transfers. Throughout the past 30 years the Salukis have had only moderate success with juco transfers - Lamar Owen and Tyrone Green come to mind.

However, counting Nate Mitchell, a walk-on who eventually earned a scholarship, the Salukis have six junior college players on the roster. I can't ever remember that happening prior to this season.

Dynasties aren't built upon juco transfers, but as a stop-gap measure, the Salukis could have done worse.

Mamadou Seck has taken Carbondale by storm with his energetic play. His 9.6 scoring and 7.1 rebounding averages have earned him a spot in the starting lineup. John Freeman has been one of the team's steadiest performers over the past two seasons.

Jack Crowder, a juco All-American, came to SIU with a lot of hype last year, but underperformed. This year Crowder has added toughness on the offensive end and has been a defensive stopper so far.

Mykel Cleveland and Troy Long haven't contributed as consistently as Seck, Freeman and Crowder, but the season is young. Long did score 10 points in the first half against New Mexico, a game in which the Salukis had serious scoring issues.

The bottom line: 4-4 isn't great, but the situation would be quite grim without the juco guys.

 

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Search for first win takes 0-9 Redhawks to SIU



The Southeast men have mounting injury problems as they visit their regional rival

The Southeast Missouri State men's basketball team enters one of its regional rivalry games tonight winless and banged up.

Southeast coach Dickey Nutt hopes the Redhawks can fight through their situation when they face Southern Illinois University-Carbondale in a 7:05 p.m. tipoff at newly-renovated SIU Arena.

The Redhawks are 0-9 for the program's worst start since moving up to the Division I level with the 1991-92 season. They entered the week among just nine Division I squads still searching for a victory.

Southeast, which dropped its last eight contests a year ago, takes a 17-game losing streak to Carbondale, Ill.,

"We're just going to keep our heads held high and keep working," Nutt said. "We just want to keep improving. I think we are."

Nutt came away encouraged with what he saw during Monday's 85-58 loss at Iowa State.

"You hate losing, but I was really proud of the effort, the way our guys fought and hung in there," said Nutt, whose squad will be playing its fourth game in seven days. "I really believe that we came away with a little bit of confidence, as strange as it sounds."

The Redhawks are shorthanded, and Nutt doesn't think that will change any time soon.

Junior college transfer guard Nick Niemczyk has not played the past three games as the knee he had surgery on in April continues to bother him.

Nutt fears Niemczyk, second on the Redhawks in scoring with a 13.4 average while also being their top 3-point shooter, is done for the season. If that is the case, Southeast will try to get him a medical redshirt.

Senior forward Cameron Butler, who has played in just two games, will miss several more weeks with foot problems.

"This is the team we have right now," said Nutt, whose club currently has only nine available players. "I think our team understands that Nick is probably done for this season and Cameron will be out for a while."

Southeast figures to have a difficult time breaking into the win column against perennial mid-major power SIU, although the Salukis have fallen on somewhat hard times recently.

SIU had a run of six straight NCAA tournament appearances end with an NIT berth during the 2007-08 season.

The past two years have not included any postseason play for the Salukis. They dipped to 13-18 in 2008-09 and went 15-15 last season, when they finished ninth in the 10-team Missouri Valley Conference.

"They've had a great program over the years, one of the best mid-major programs in the country," Nutt said. "They're still very good."

SIU is off to a 4-4 start under seventh-year coach Chris Lowery, a former Southeast assistant. The Salukis have not yet played an MVC contest.

Two of SIU's losses were to nationally ranked Purdue and Illinois. The Salukis have also been beaten by a strong New Mexico squad and fell to Northeastern in overtime.

"They'll be a very tough opponent in a very tough place to play," Nutt said.

The Salukis have received balanced scoring so far, with five players averaging between 7.5 and 10.1 points per game. Nine players are averaging at least 15.6 minutes a contest.

Gene Teague, 6-foot-9, 290-pound sophomore center who made the MVC all-freshmen team last year, leads the way with averages of 10.1 points and 7.0 rebounds while shooting 58 percent from the field.

Carlton Fay, 6-8, 225-pound senior forward and three-year starter, is averaging 10 points.

SIU has struggled with its outside shooting so far, making just 26.7 percent from 3-point range.

The Salukis have been strong on the boards with a rebounding advantage of 38.1 to 30.3 per game.

SIU leads the longest series in Southeast history 68-44 but last year marked the first meeting between the squads since the 2004-05 season.

The Salukis have won 12 of the past 13 meetings, including last year's 86-65 romp at the Show Me Center that featured their fifth straight victory over Southeast.

Southeast's most recent win in the series was 87-84 during the 2000-01 season when Lowery was a Southeast assistant.

"It'll be a big challenge for us," Nutt said.