Southern Illinoise University Athletics
Kyle Smithpeters MVC Tournament Journal
03/10/2005 | 12:00:00 | Men's Basketball
March 6, 2005
Sunday, March 6, 2005
A sad day for the Saluki team and fans. We just took an L to a very inferior SMS team. We came into the game with strictly business on our mind. We really wanted to this win for us and coach Lowery.
This was a team that gave us a very good beating earlier in the year. The game started out well for us, probably the best half of the year. The attitude in the locker room at half was to keep putting it on SMS. We wanted to make sure that we finished them off quick and not let them back into the game.
The second half seemed as if it was going in slow motion from the very start. Our lead slowly dwindled as the clock slowly expired. I believe we came back out into the game with good intentions, but sometimes things just don't go your way. We couldn't really seem to get a flow to the second half. A lot of the shots that we hit in the first half and all year just didn't seem to fall.
We played a good 30 to 35 minutes of this game. It was about a five-minute break down that cost us this game. It was a shock and a bad feeling of trying to realize if this just really happened.
It hasn't sunk in yet, but that sick feeling in my stomach is still there. Coach Lowery came in after the game telling us not to let this one game bring down such a good season. He said we shouldn't be happy and look to improve and grow from this. Coach Lowery said we are 26-7, a whole lot better than 7-26. Coach Lowery did do a great job of lifting the team and telling us to use this as a learning experience to get better.
The sad thing is that coach Lowery will take the blame for the meltdown. This is so far from true. This coaching staff all year has prepared us before a game with great detail. We knew as a team what it would take to beat this team, and we the players just didn't execute that game plan well enough.
We still feel that we deserve to make the Tournament. It probably hurt our position, dropping us to maybe an 8 or 9 seed rather than a much higher one. We know we are a better team than that type of seed, but we will take it and do well. Now we play the waiting game until Sunday to see just what our future as a team holds for us.
