Men's Basketball homestand continues with Jackson State on Wednesday

Wednesday, December 13

Carbondale, IL

7 PM

Southern Illinois University

Jackson State

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Photo by: T.H. Weber

Men's Basketball homestand continues with Jackson State on Wednesday

12/12/2017 | 3:15:00 | Men's Basketball

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By: By Tom Weber, SIUSalukis.com

JACKSON STATE (3-7) at SOUTHERN ILLINOIS (4-4)
Dec. 13, 2017 • 7 p.m. CT
Carbondale, Ill. • SIU Arena (8,284)
SERIES: First Meeting

CARBONDALE, Ill. — Southern Illinois and Jackson State will square off for the first time in men's basketball when the teams play Wednesday at 7 p.m. The Salukis have only played five games all-time against current members of the Southwestern Athletic Conference — Alabama State (1-0), Mississippi Valley State (1-2) and Texas Southern (1-0).

The last time SIU played a SWAC opponent was on Dec. 3, 2016, when it beat Texas Southern, 74-70. What looked like a blowout early turned into a white-knuckler. The Salukis jumped to a 28-13 lead, but TSU rallied in the second half as the lead changed hands 14 times. SIU trailed, 70-68, with 1:30 to go, but the Tigers were assessed with two technical fouls and the Salukis scored the game's final six points.

SIU head coach Barry Hinson is 3-0 lifetime versus SWAC opponents with wins over Alabama State and Southern when he coached at Missouri State, plus last year's win over TSU.

Marcus Bartley makes debut
After missing the first six games of the season with a broken wrist, Saint Louis transfer G Marcus Bartley (6-5, 193, Jr.) made his Saluki debut last week. He scored 12 points at Saint Louis and led the team with six assists in 38 minutes versus SEMO.

Aaron Cook improved from three
G Aaron Cook (6-2, 185, So.) has made dramatic improvement in his 3-point shooting percentage this season and has already surpassed last season's total makes. In 2016-17, he was 5-for-27 (.185). This season, he is 12-for-26 (.462). His scoring average has jumped from 3.0 to 10.5 points per game.

Dawg Bites
•SIU's 28 3-point attempts vs. SEMO were the most in the Hinson era.
•SIU's 14 offensive rebounds vs. SEMO were a season high.
•Lloyd has made a 3-pointer in six-straight games.
•SIU has lost back-to-back non-conference home games only once in the Hinson era (New Orleans and Murray State in December of 2014).
•The Salukis are in the midst of a stretch of four home games in a 10-day span.
•SIU has led at halftime of every game except Louisville and SEMO.
•F Thik Bol (6-8, 202, Sr.) had knee surgery on Nov. 3 and is not expected to return until the start of conference play.

Head coach Barry Hinson met with the media on Tuesday.

How bad do you need a win (against Jackson State)?
Well, we need a win for a lot of reasons, but more so for anything for our confidence right now. We don't have a lot of confidence. We've had two pretty good days of preparation. It hasn't been, I wouldn't say fantastic, but we just need to get a win. I think that will help us. There's only one Band-Aid for us and that's to get a win. In order to do that, we're going to have to play well. Obviously, that's been one of our priorities in practice.

Do you feel like you got their attention about possibly overlooking SEMO and focusing on this next game on Wednesday?
If we can't get their attention after two losses then we really do have problems. I don't know how to answer that question until after we've played. I'm not going to be bold enough to tell you yes, because if you can't get their attention after losing at Saint Louis, then I don't know what you can do there, too. We certainly have made it a topic of conversation. There's certainly been a lot of one-on-one meetings, and we'll see if it comes to correlation tomorrow night.

Richard Pitino of Minnesota said our bad offense affected our defense. That sounded familiar.
I think this time of year, you can read quotes from coaches and there's a lot of bad offense leads to bad defense. We all know that. Certainly, bad shots lead to good shots — you've heard announcers say that a hundred times. The biggest thing we've tried to harp on our guys is — we have got to play better defense. Our defensive numbers aren't what we want them to be. They're certainly better than they were last year, but they're not where we want them to be. I think the biggest topic of conversation right now is we're not going to let offense dictate how we play. I stand by what I've said all along, I think we have some guys who can score the ball, that's one of the things they're worried about right now. It's amazing to me, a guy goes up, is maybe the leading scorer of the game, comes back the next game and he can't play defense. We've got to make sure (defense) is our focal point.

Do you feel a fire has been lit in Aaron Cook with Marcus Bartley's return?
No, I think Aaron's been pretty consistent most of the year. I don't think it's so much lighting a fire, a lot of it has to do with the presence of Marcus on the floor has opened him up for some more shots as well. His role obviously changed the other night in the second half playing the two-guard slot for us. I do think that was a bright spot. We've talked about that. Certainly, we're looking at different lineups, different combinations. When you lose two games in a row you start thinking about different things. We've certainly looked at that from the defensive end of the floor, not so much the offensive end.

Is Cook your best shooting guard right now?
Percentage-wise he's our best 3-point shooter, so yeah, I think you look at the improvement Aaron's made over one year, last year he wasn't in that category and this year's he's put himself in that category. Our biggest deal with Aaron is we still want him to drive the basketball because we think he's so fast. Use what you have. He's so doggone quick that we want him get to the basket. That's the other thing we've got to do is get to the free throw line. I think our two things offensively that are haunting us more than anything is our turnovers — we've given up 32 points in our last two games on turnovers, 16 to Saint Louis, 16 to SEMO — and the other thing is we have to get to the free throw line. We did against Saint Louis and that kept us in the game. We did not, we got doubled up at the free throw line when we played SEMO. We've got to be able to attack the basket.

Jackson State averages almost nine steals per game, so you'll have to take care of the ball…
You have to put a value on the basketball, you can't turn it over. That's one of the things we just told them. This basketball team that we're getting ready to play, don't let the record fool you, because they've played six road games. They don't get to play at home very often. I can tell you this, the staff is not anywhere, shape or form taking this team for granted. But I do think (this game) is more about us than anybody else. We're trying to get our confidence back and try to do it on the defensive end of the floor.

How do you make Kavion Pippen more of a factor Wednesday night?
Offensively, we have to throw him the ball. Defensively, he has to get in a stance and guard people. They're going to do the exact same thing SEMO did to him. They're going to bring him out on the floor. Every guy that he's going to guard has the capability of making threes. We told him today and we worked with him today — he's going to have to guard out on the perimeter, get in a stance and guard people on the perimeter.