Southern Illinois University
5-5
Western Kentucky
5-5
Western Kentucky rallies to beat Men's Basketball, 53-46
12/11/2010 | 12:00:00 | Men's Basketball
Dec. 11, 2010
By Tom Weber
SIUSalukis.com
BOWLING GREEN, Ky. - Defense, rebounding and an efficient offense are the three-legged stool that Saluki Basketball has stood upon for the past decade.
The first two legs were sturdy today against the Hilltoppers, but the chair ultimately tipped over because the Salukis couldn't take care of the basketball.
In a grind-it-out, possession game, Southern Illinois squandered a 13-point lead by committing 23 turnovers, falling to Western Kentucky, 53-46. During head coach Chris Lowery's six-plus seasons at the helm, only once has Southern scored fewer points.
The Salukis (5-5) staked out to a 19-6 lead in the first dozen minutes. The defense was superb, forcing the Hilltoppers (5-5) to miss 14-consecutive shots. The rebounding was phenomenal, as SIU amassed a 42-22 overall advantage.
If not for an outbreak of turnovers, the game could have become a Saluki rout in the first half. Southern had 33 first-half possessions and 12 of them ended in a turnover.
"We jumped on them and got them where we needed to get them," said Saluki head coach Chris Lowery. "Then we had some unforced errors. We tried to play (up tempo) like them and we didn't need to do that. We needed to grind them out and really stretch the lead at the end of the first half."
It was impossible to point a finger at one player. Every member of Lowery'a nine-man rotation coughed it up at least twice, but none more than three times. There were turnovers of every variety -- traveling calls, shot-clock violations, ball-handling miscues and a lane violation.
"We played a great game as far as defense is concerned," said Lowery, whose team had more turnovers (23) than baskets (20). "We have to take care of the ball, which has been our Achilles heel all year, and it came back to bite us again."
Western was just 7-of-28 shooting from the field at intermission but must have felt relieved to be down by only six, 23-17.
"They hit us pretty hard early," said Hilltoppers head coach Ken McDonald. "We couldn't make a shot. It was very much a typical Western-Southern Illinois game. It was very physical."
The Salukis had two things working on offense -- Mamadou Seck was able to beat defenders off the dribble, and center Gene Teague could score down low when he wasn't being double-teamed. Seck finished with 12 points and 11 rebounds, while Teague made 5-of-7 shots for 12 points.
"I thought our ball pressure was where it needed to be and our help-side defense was really good," McDonald said. "We talked a lot about the help-side because of Teague being such a monster in there."
The game was still tilting in Southern's favor when Teague hit a put-back bucket at the 6:09 mark that gave SIU a 37-33 lead.
That's when Western's Sergio Kerusch answered with a 3-pointer, opening a mini-floodgate of offense for Western that washed away any hopes the Salukis had of notching a road victory.
The Hilltoppers went on a 14-1 run during a five-minute span, including a 3-pointer by Steffphon Pettigrew, who had missed his first five attempts from behind the arc. Meanwhile, Southern's offense went dormant.
"We didn't execute at the end of the game," Lowery said. "We had some guys get in the wrong spots. We just got mixed up. (Western's) guys are good players -- you can't take anything away from them."
McDonald looked at the box score for the first time when he sat down at the press conference. All he could say was "wow" when he noticed the rebounding discrepancy.
"That's a very lopsided stat to come out with a win," he noted.
Southern had won seven of the last nine meetings between the schools, and McDonald said recent games between the clubs have been pivotal for hist team.
"We were able to illustrate the last two years exactly what this game meant to us," said McDonald, whose team has now won two-straight on the season.
Lowery said he couldn't fault his team's effort, only its execution at various times throughout the contest.
"This was on us," he said. "We were in position to win the game."
