Richard Carter the Distributor could be scarier than Richard Carter the Scorer tonight for SIU?s men?s basketball team.
Carter, Drake?s leading scorer and leading assists man, has helped the Bulldogs build one of the best perimeter attacks in the Missouri Valley Conference this season. Drake (10-8, 1-5 MVC) has hit seven or more triples in a game in seven of its last eight contests. Five different players have 14 or more 3s on the season, and if SIU (6-13, 2-4 MVC) can?t contain Carter and 5-9 Jordan Daniels tonight at SIU Arena, there could be more.
?I think when you look at Drake, very similar to Northern Iowa, very similar in the sense that the two guards are very quick and we have to guard them effectively and everybody around those guys can shoot the 3, and that?s what makes Drake so dangerous,? SIU coach Barry Hinson said. ?Hopefully, we can do a better job of guarding their penetration like we did at Bradley. Whether we can do that in man or zone there?s no question that those two guards are the main problem.?
Bradley beat the Salukis 66-60 on Friday night in Peoria to drop both teams into a five-way tie for fifth place in the Valley standings. Drake has dropped five straight games after beating Evansville, 94-66, but has won five straight games against SIU in Carbondale. The Salukis haven?t beaten the Bulldogs, period, since the regular-season finale in Des Moines, Iowa, last season, and haven?t beaten them at SIU Arena since 2008.
Drake, led by another guard by the name of Adam Emmenecker that set up a lot of perimeter shooters, was ranked 14th in the country at the time and had won 21 straight games.
Carter, who had 24 points in a 10-point loss at Loyola on Jan. 15, has averaged 17.3 points per game in his last three games. Daniels, a junior who is expected to start tonight, averages 13.2 points per game.
Valley play has been a tough turn for Drake, which started out 9-3 under first-year coach Ray Giacoletti. The Bulldogs outrebounded their opponents by almost two boards a game and held them to 67.9 points per game in the non-conference schedule. In six Valley games, Drake has gotten outrebounded by an average of almost five boards per game (4.2) and allowed more than 72 points per game.
Giacoletti expects to move 6-6 junior forward Trevor Berkeley into the starting lineup tonight to help turn those rebounding numbers back around.
?We?ll be bigger and a little bit more athletic. We don?t have a lot of buttons to push as far as making changes,? Giacoletti said. ?I think we?ll be better defensively and we?ll be better rebounding the ball. Offensively, we?ll wait and see. Right now we?ve gotta be able to get stops and rebound the ball. It doesn?t matter what you do offensively if you can?t do those two things.?
Carter, Drake?s leading scorer and leading assists man, has helped the Bulldogs build one of the best perimeter attacks in the Missouri Valley Conference this season. Drake (10-8, 1-5 MVC) has hit seven or more triples in a game in seven of its last eight contests. Five different players have 14 or more 3s on the season, and if SIU (6-13, 2-4 MVC) can?t contain Carter and 5-9 Jordan Daniels tonight at SIU Arena, there could be more.
?I think when you look at Drake, very similar to Northern Iowa, very similar in the sense that the two guards are very quick and we have to guard them effectively and everybody around those guys can shoot the 3, and that?s what makes Drake so dangerous,? SIU coach Barry Hinson said. ?Hopefully, we can do a better job of guarding their penetration like we did at Bradley. Whether we can do that in man or zone there?s no question that those two guards are the main problem.?
Bradley beat the Salukis 66-60 on Friday night in Peoria to drop both teams into a five-way tie for fifth place in the Valley standings. Drake has dropped five straight games after beating Evansville, 94-66, but has won five straight games against SIU in Carbondale. The Salukis haven?t beaten the Bulldogs, period, since the regular-season finale in Des Moines, Iowa, last season, and haven?t beaten them at SIU Arena since 2008.
Drake, led by another guard by the name of Adam Emmenecker that set up a lot of perimeter shooters, was ranked 14th in the country at the time and had won 21 straight games.
Carter, who had 24 points in a 10-point loss at Loyola on Jan. 15, has averaged 17.3 points per game in his last three games. Daniels, a junior who is expected to start tonight, averages 13.2 points per game.
Valley play has been a tough turn for Drake, which started out 9-3 under first-year coach Ray Giacoletti. The Bulldogs outrebounded their opponents by almost two boards a game and held them to 67.9 points per game in the non-conference schedule. In six Valley games, Drake has gotten outrebounded by an average of almost five boards per game (4.2) and allowed more than 72 points per game.
Giacoletti expects to move 6-6 junior forward Trevor Berkeley into the starting lineup tonight to help turn those rebounding numbers back around.
?We?ll be bigger and a little bit more athletic. We don?t have a lot of buttons to push as far as making changes,? Giacoletti said. ?I think we?ll be better defensively and we?ll be better rebounding the ball. Offensively, we?ll wait and see. Right now we?ve gotta be able to get stops and rebound the ball. It doesn?t matter what you do offensively if you can?t do those two things.?
