Men's Basketball hosts Lamar on Sunday

LAMAR (8-1) at SOUTHERN ILLINOIS (5-4)
Dec. 17, 2017 • 3 p.m. CT
Carbondale, Ill. • SIU Arena (8,284)
SERIES: SIU leads 2-1 (H: 1-0, A: 0-1, N: 1-0)

Winter break for the SIU students means $10 Dawg Pound tickets for the general public. Fans can take advantage of this special deal at home men's basketball games until classes resume.

CARBONDALE, Ill. — It has been almost 47 years since the last meeting between Southern Illinois and Lamar. The last time the teams met was in Beaumont, Texas on Jan. 9, 1971. The Cardinals won, 102-83, and held SIU's top scorer, Greg Starrick, to a season-low 10 points on 5-of-22 shooting from the field. Starrick went on to average 22.4 points per game that season. The first meeting between the schools took place on March 8, 1963 in the second round of the College Division NCAA Tournament. The Salukis won in overtime, 93-84, behind a 28-point performance by Dave Henson. Southern beat the Cardinals again on Jan. 24, 1970 at SIU Arena. L.C. Brasfield had 22 points and 11 rebounds to pace SIU.

The Salukis are 13-4 all-time against the current members of the Southland Conference. The last time SIU played a Southland opponent was on Dec. 10, 2016, when Sam Houston State came to Carbondale and won, 79-73. SIU head coch Barry Hinson is 9-2 lifetime versus Southland opponents, including a 7-2 mark since coming to SIU. He has a 5-1 record against New Orleans.

G Armon Fletcher flourishes at hybrid forward
The Salukis unveiled a new, four-guard lineup on Wednesday versus Jackson State, inserting guard Aaron Cook into starting lineup in place of forward Jonathan Wiley, who had started the previous eight games. G Armon Fletcher (6-5, 207, Jr.) moved to the "hybrid four" position and scored a career-high 24-points. He had a career-high 14 field goal attempts and was 9-of-10 from the free throw line.

Kavion Pippen leads team in scoring
Juco transfer C Kavion Pippen (6-10, 240, Jr.) leads the team in scoring (13.7), field goal percentage (.589), shot attempts (90) and blocked shots (20). Pippen scored in double figures in seven-straight games to start the season. The nephew of NBA legend Scottie Pippen was named MVC Newcomer of the Week on Nov. 12 and again on Dec. 4 after scoring 22 points on 9-of-10 shooting versus San Jose State. He's coming off a 24-point outing versus Jackson State.

Marcus Bartley has 2-to-1 A/TO ratio
After missing the first six games of the season with a broken wrist, Saint Louis transfer G Marcus Bartley (6-5, 193, Jr.) has established himself in the starting lineup as the team's point guard. He has a 2-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio and is coming off a seven-assist performance against Jackson State.

Dawg Bites
•SIU held Jackson State to 25.4 percent shooting from the field — the lowest in the Hinson era and eighth-lowest all-time.
•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 January.
•SIU has gone 91-consecutive games with at least one 3-point field goal and 999-consecutive games with at least one free throw (dating back to 1986).
•Barry Hinson is 45-36 overall in non-conference games at SIU.

Head coach Barry Hinson met with the media prior to Friday's practice.

How did you like the lineup Wednesday with Fletcher at the four?
The sample size is kind of small, but quite frankly, I liked it. I don't know how you can argue when Armon (Fletcher) comes out of there with 24 points and (Kavion) Pippen 24 points. To me, the encouraging thing about our game was we did not play well on the perimeter (and still won) — we turned the ball over, our guards turned the ball over 14 times, we were 2-for-9 from three — to me that was really encouraging. Our guards did play well on the defensive end. Marcus played a lot better — he didn't get beat on penetration. Our guards did a good job on helping, we did a better job on rebounding. So I think that was the encouraging thing when I came out of the Jackson State game, was that I didn't feel like we really played overly great on the perimeter and yet we have an 18-point win.

You talked about Colton Weisbrod (Lamar's leading scorer), what is the scouting report on the rest of Lamar's team?
(Josh) Nzeakor — he's one of those guys — he can score in or he can score out. (Nick) Garth, (Zjori) Bosha, (Joey) Frenchwood — they can all shoot the basketball. Frenchwood had a game where he had four or five threes on the road. This team — I told you guys early season — this team's a good basketball team. We're really going to have to play well to beat them. I think it will be an enjoyable game for our fans to watch.

Have you gotten any news on Thik Bol?
We did not get good news, I don't consider it bad news, but Thik is not going to play until after the first of the year. The news that we got is he's making great progress but not progress enough to where we can put him on the floor. Thik will not travel with us to Las Vegas. He'll stay here and continually rehab. He'll also stay here over Christmas break and rehab. We're not cleared to put him on the floor until after we get back from Northern Iowa. He will not play at Northern Iowa.

You take away Lamar's three triple-digit games and their points per game average drops 13 points — does that instill confidence in your guys?
I never look at that. Here's what I look at, guys. These are the things I look at when I look at a team. I look at their balanced scoring, I look at what they're shooting from the three, I look at what their shooting from the two, I want to know who their best offensive rebounder is, I look at their assist-to-turnover ratio, I look at how many steals their getting. All those categories I just talked about, they're really good at. To me, we talk about defense and points allowed, well some ball clubs are possessive-heavy where they have long possessions. We have some teams in our league that are always thought of as great defensive teams, but they have long possessions. There's only one way to gauge defense and that's field goal percentage defense. That's it. That's the biggest thing I look at right off the bat. What is their field goal percentage defense? When I look at Lamar and I look at the teams we're getting ready to play, those are some of the things they're doing a good job of.

Do you think (Eric) McGill and (Tyler) Smithpeters are getting the shots they've always had and are not knocking them down right now?
I think their shot selection has not been great. I'm not going to throw Tyler and Eric in that, I'm going to throw all of them in that. I went back and looked at every missed 3-point shot and there was one common denominator — we're shooting the ball 1-2 feet behind the line every time we shoot it. We have a 23 percent completion rate when we shoot NBA threes. When we shoot up on the line, we're shooting 39 percent. I went back and studied film after Jackson State — I wanted to study our turnovers and I wanted to study why we are shooting the ball so bad — because it's not a talent issue. Right now, our 3-point percentage is bad because we're taking either guarded threes or deep threes. That's on me and our coaching staff and we're going to start working on that immediately. We're going to talk to our team about it today and we're going to emphasize it in practice. We're going to get up on that line.

Have you seen teams defend (Jonathan) Wiley in a different way?
Well, the three games prior to (SEMO) he scored double figures. He had one bad game against SEMO and he just missed shots. Are they defending him different? When Jonathan's out on the perimeter, they're not going out there on him. They're backing off of him, but when he can make those 15, 16, 17 footers, it's not an issue. That will change now with Armon out there, because Armon can make those shots. He can stretch the defense.

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Players Mentioned

Marcus Bartley

Thik Bol

Aaron Cook Jr.

Armon Fletcher

Kavion Pippen

Jonathan Wiley

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