Southern Illinoise University Athletics
Men's Basketball hosts Evansville on Saturday afternoon
02/03/2012 | 12:00:00 | Men's Basketball
Feb. 3, 2012
By Tyler Wooten
SIUSalukis.com
CARBONDALE, Ill. - Southern Illinois (7-16, 4-8) will host Evansville (11-11, 6-6) in a Missouri Valley Conference men's basketball matchup at 2:05 p.m. on Saturday.
This is also Hall of Fame weekend at SIU. The Class of 2012 -- Joel Sambursky (Football), Sandy Blaha (Women's Golf), John Garrett (Men's Basketball), Nate Hawthorne (Men's Basketball), Gary Hunter (Track & Field) and Kristie Kemner (Volleyball) will be recognized at halftime.
Saluki basketball coach Chris Lowery took questions from the media prior to Friday's practice.
Q: "Do you still see resiliency in this team?"
"Yeah. I think the ones that are playing the most are obviously the most resilient, that's the best way to be. Some guys that aren't playing, obviously Josh (Swan) and Davante (Drinkard) are a little down in the dumps because they can't play. Tony Bryer is a little down, but they understand. Tony Bryer got two pairs of stitches in a week, but he's coming and working hard still every day."
Q: "Are Josh and Davante done for the season?"
"I don't know. Josh, more than likely. Davante, we still don't know. His x-rays were negative, but he's still got pain, but he's out of the boot for now, so hopefully in another week we'll be able to decide what's going to happen with him."
Q: "And you said Tony got stitches?"
"He just got hit in the eye and hit under his eye in back-to-back days, so he had back-to-back trips to get stitches."
Q: "Would a win at this point solve a lot of the issues you're having?"
"A win solves a lot, but it's confidence, confidence is a win away and I think that would definitely help us. We're obviously upset that we're not playing a whole game, but I think that they want to be better and they're not allowing a game to get them down. They're still trying to improve, they're still trying to do what we ask."
Q: "Can you contain Colt Ryan this weekend? Is he the priority or is it just their guard play?"
"I think it's guard play, period. Their guards are all playing extremely well right now. They're not getting hardly anything from the inside guys right now, they're really just screeners for them. Colt Ryan is definitely the guy. Coming off what he did, what he and Denver (Holmes) both did, they were both in the mid-20s at Bradley, those are the driving forces behind what they're doing."
Q: "Is this a team you can slow down? Their game is predicated on quickness and pushing the pace."
"I think we have to change their tempo and make them guard us. What they do is they make you speed up, and then they take their time. They make a lot of shots quick on the shot clock. It's not just that they're pushing it all the time, they're just making a bunch of shots really quick. The biggest thing is keeping Colt at bay and not let him go off, and really just making everybody else work to get baskets, too."
Q: "You had success last time you were able to get the ball inside to Dantiel (Daniels) and Mamadou (Seck) -- how do you ensure the entry pass?"
"We had 23 turnovers last game, and most of them were unforced when we were trying to do things we shouldn't be doing. I think the one thing is that we have to be patient enough to know that's where the ball needs to go, and I think we're slowly realizing it probably needs to go to Dantiel a lot more than what it's been. That's what we've worked on this week, to make sure we really get him touches."
Q: "Have you seen a big change in Kenny Harris for Evansville?"
"He's different, he's a senior, but his role is still kinda the same. The big difference is Colt Ryan's averaging 23 a game and leading the league in scoring, I think he's the biggest X-factor. His game has greatly helped everybody else because when you get a guy like that, he gives other guys opportunities. He's still averaging 3.5 assists, which means he's handling the ball a lot and he's sharing it a lot, too."
Q: "Have you challenged Kendal (Brown-Surles)?"
"He's gotta step his game up. Obviously (at) Northern Iowa was very disappointing. We need him to be better, and we need him to be in a leadership capacity, and with only six games left we shouldn't be saying that, but we are. I think if you look at what Kourtney (Goff) has given us throughout the whole year, he's kinda been a security blanket. He's played hard, he's done what we've asked him to do, and at this point he's going to play more. He's even playing more anyway because of the fact that Kendal's struggled."
Q: "Do you think you can make some progress with two-straight home games?"
"I think it's time for us to really move forward and this is a good time for us. We're putting a lot of pressure on them to play at a high level because this is an opportunity where if we win two games, the guys ahead of us will be tied with us, and that's where we need to be."
Q: "You mentioned hitting "the wall" with some of your freshmen -- is this where you cut down on some of their minutes?"
"We can't because of the way some of our older guys are playing, you just have to play them. At this point they just have to tough it out."
Q: "How are the new players dealing with some of the negativity concerning the basketball program and the community?"
"How do you think? You talk to them. They're handling it fine because they understand. We corral them, we don't allow that stuff to get to them because it's about this team, not about what people are saying about me or about what they're doing. It's about getting better. If that was the case, we would have self-destructed like we have over the last two years, with those kids being not the right type of kids who focus on the negative side of it. These kids have not done that the whole year, and they focused on trying to get better, and they're still trying to do the things that we ask them, so at this point it hasn't affected their play, and it hasn't affected our relationship with them, either."
Q: "Aside from Creighton and Wichita State, are you encouraged that the rest of the Valley is still relatively up for grabs?"
"Who knows? With everybody jumbled up, a couple wins for us puts us right back in the hunt and puts some other people out of the hunt. It's never been this way, with two teams separated by that much and everybody else three or four games behind."
Q: "How will this game be different from the conference opener against Evansville (Dec. 29)?"
"It's hard to look in the future, but obviously we'll play harder. I think coming fromHawaiiwas a big part of our problem in that game. They were playing well and we weren't. I think the biggest thing for us is to focus on now and not even think about what happened last time. Obviously, in film we revisited it again with them, but I think they were shocked by how bad we played and the energy and the enthusiasm we didn't have in that game."
Q: "You mentioned earlier that this group is different than the group you've had the last couple years that have 'self-destructed' -- how is this group different?"
"The way they act. They want to learn, and even though we're learning and losing at the same time, they haven't let that separate themselves. It's easy when things aren't going the way you don't want them to, to blame everybody else, to blame the coaches. Those guys have really handled it extremely well, because the new guys are the ones talking the most in the locker room, and they're the ones talking most in the community. They love this place, and that's the key: you have to have guys that want to be here."
