Men's Basketball opens regular season at Saint Louis

Nov. 13, 2014

CARBONDALE, Ill. - The Southern Illinois University men's basketball team will open the regular season on Saturday when it plays at Saint Louis at 7 p.m. at Chaifetz Arena. The game will be televised regionally. At the bottom of the page is a complete listing of TV coverage.

Southern Illinois at Saint Louis
Date	Saturday, Nov. 15, 2014
Time	7:00 p.m. CT
Location	St. Louis, Mo. - Chaifetz Arena, 10,600
Radio	Saluki Sports Network
TV	Fox Sports Midwest Plus
Live Video	>None
Live Audio	Stretch Internet
Game Notes	Southern Illinois
Live Stats	Stat Broadcast
Social Media	@SIU_Basketball

Q&A with Head Coach Barry Hinson

Q: What are your thoughts on the redshirts (Austin Weiher, Armon Fletcher)?

"My thought is when I interviewed for this job I told them that it was imperative for us to be able to get to fourth and fifth-year seniors with our basketball program. I have personally witnessed it on both sides. Having a team in the Missouri Valley with fourth and fifth-year seniors and seeing what we are able to do. At Kansas, I saw a senior-laden team at Northern Iowa beat us. It is the only denominator that we have where we can compete with the BCS programs down the stretch. You can't redshirt individuals who you don't think will get really better. The two individuals that we decided to redshirt I think have an unbelievable upside to what they can potentially do. Just like all redshirts, they have to embrace, come with their lunch pail every day, and they have to get better. The first year is hard, but 100 percent of the kids that I have redshirted are just happy as they can be. I always thought that you are a lot better at 23, than you are at 18."

Q: Why are fifth-year seniors so valuable to a team?

"I go back to saying that you are a lot better at 23 than you are at 18. You have a year under your belt, which is a bonus year that not many other people have. You have the opportunity to grow not only physically, but also mentally. In today's society, we are very immature. We are a Facebook generation and we cannot stay focused for a long time. It gives them an extra year and a bonus focus year in my opinion."

Q: What made Austin Weiher an attractive recruit?

"I think the thing that made Austin attractive was his size. We needed size and we had to have somebody that we felt like could give us that. The bonus factor was that we knew he had offensive skills. He has a long way to go as far as explosiveness, his core, and specifically more so than anything that kept him off the floor early on, was defense. That is pretty typical for most freshmen."

Q: How is Jordan Caroline's health?

"He is not great. It is not going to be good for quite some time. There is nothing that we can do about it. He has a high ankle sprain. We are looking at the majority of the season with him having that. He is going to have to play on one leg. We have limited him in practice. He will not be 100 percent and I don't think he will be this entire season."

Q: Did he get hurt in practice or in the game?

"He got hurt in practice and then he aggravated it in the game. When I say aggravated it, I mean that there is nothing that we can do. There is a little bit of therapy, but you saw what he did in the last exhibition on one leg. Jordan on one leg is as athletic as anybody that we have. We are not damaging or hurting it any more. He is just going to have to play with a lot of pain. He will constantly be in a boot, unless he is on the practice floor."

Q: How do you prepare for Saint Louis with them losing several players from last year?

"I think that you can ask that question to both Jim (Crews) and I. I think that SLU is going to have to answer that question, too. We don't know. The analogy that I gave this morning is that we are a bunch of geese in a snow blizzard. You have one honker and a bunch of followers. Neither one of us really have film. We are limited on our scouting report simply because we are the first game. They scrimmaged and then played against Harris-Stowe. I don't think that Harris-Stowe is going to be a great indicator of what they can do statistically and what they can't do. They went and had a good scrimmage with Memphis, but we don't have anything from that scrimmage. They are young like us, but not quite as young. I expect it to be a heck of a ballgame."

Q: How good has the defensive communication been during practice?

"It has been awful. We talked about that and it has been one of our problems. That is why we did a personality exam this year. It was to find out what we can do to help out team. We have two or three introverts on the floor. It is not a negative, it's just their personalities. We are trying to find ways and create other individuals that will talk, whether it be on the floor or from the bench. Our communication process has got to get a lot better for us to be where we want to be defensively."

Q: How will Jalen Pendleton role change this year?

"Jalen's role has not changed since he arrived here. He is one of those kids that has an unbelievable personality. We were just asked a question about defensive communication. Jalen will talk, his challenge is will he talk if he is not playing well on the offensive end? Jalen can have an unbelievable impact on this ballclub when he opens his mouth and is positive. I don't need him to score points, that is an extra added bonus. What I need Jalen to do is lead this team, guard the other team's best player, play his tail off, get rebounds, and make plays for other players. I know that he can do that."

Q: Other than defensive communication, is there one other thing that you are looking for against SLU?

"The biggest thing right now is that we have to try and grow up. It is just a process. If I could stick them all in a microwave to speed up the maturation process I would, but you just can't do that. We are going to go through some really tough moments and times where we drive people crazy. The flip side is that I really like these guys. I've said that a lot. They have great attitudes, want to work hard, and want to please. They have great work ethic. We are running guys out of the gym at 11 p.m. when we are locking up to go home. Naturally with six freshmen and three sophomores, we are just going to have some growing pains."

Q: Were there any other players you wanted to redshirt?

"I would have liked to have redshirted three guys this year, but we just couldn't. If you think outside of the box, we could have redshirted some upperclassmen if felt like it. If you look at what we have right now, we have allowed ourselves to prepare for injuries, sickness, and suspensions. You never know what is going to happen. We think that we have a plethora of guards and some bigs. We are already stretched thin with our bigs right now. I think that we redshirted the only amount that we could."

Q: Is the situation with Tyler Smithpeters behind us now, or is there still possibly some stuff to come out of that?

"The University has not made a decision. As far as I'm concerned, we're playing basketball right now. He's practicing, he's going to play and we're awaiting the University's decision and then we'll go from there."

Q: Where does Chaz Glotta fit into the rotation?

"Chaz is one of those guys where he could play four minutes of a game, no minutes in a game, or 14 minutes of a game. That is just the by-product of being a freshman. The two things that I don't have to worry about with Chaz are his attitude and his ability to work hard. He did not want to redshirt. We talked to him about it and gave him the option if he wanted to do this. My recommendation was that he not redshirt. I think that there will be a time this year when Chaz Glotta will hit three or four three's in a ballgame and help us win a game. There will be a time when we see a zone defense where we can put Chaz into the game. Chaz has some deficiencies right now that he is certainly working on. He has improved on those dramatically, but he still has a long way to go. That is part of the process."

FOX Sports Midwest Plus channel numbers for local video providers
AT&T U-verse 747 (HD 1747)
Cable America - Maryland Heights 12 or 22
Cass - Jerseyville, Ill. 12
Cass - Virginia, Ill. 8 (HD 197)
Centurylink - Columbia, Mo. 749
Charter - St. Louis 10, 198, 223 or 224 (HD 826)
Comcast - Illinois 524 (HD 520)
Consolidated 181
DirecTV 671-1 (HD 671-1)
Dish 442 or 412-30 (HD 442, 412-30 or 9580)
Fidelity - Sullivan 72
Grafton Technologies 78 (HD 790)
Highland Communications 51 (HD 551)
HomeTel - Madison 100-1 (HD 196)
HTC Communications - Monroe, Ill. 77 (HD 1077)
Madison Communications 26
Mediacom - Southern Illinois 22
Mediacom - Columbia, Jefferson City, Springfield, Mo. 22 (HD 722)
New Wave - Illinois 80 (HD 208)
US Sonet - Salem, Ill. 97 (HD 97)

SIU-SLU will also air on FOX Sports Midwest Plus through Missouri, Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska.

Calendar

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Players Mentioned

Armon Fletcher

Jalen Pendleton

Tyler Smithpeters

Austin Weiher

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