The Wednesday Word 3/3/10

By Allan Lewis/Alestle Sports Editor

Allan Lewis, Alestle Sports Editor

Good morning Cougar nation! Welcome to today’s Word.

Working on no sleep today should get interesting, especially with Ashley Bey’s senior night over at the VC later on, but we should be able to make it through. Five hour energy rules.

Anyways, I am excited for tomorrow’s paper, the sports section is going to be HUGE with lots of variety. We even have tennis and golf in the mix!

Tomorrow is also exciting, because I will be heading down to Nashville to cover the Ohio Valley Conference Tournament for the online side of the Alestle. Looking forward to sleeping at truck stops and breathing college basketball for 48 hours. There may be a little bit of hockey mixed in as well, I am going to try to get down in time for the Predators game tomorrow to sit in the nosebleeds and talk to random people about hockey in the South, all the while wearing a St. Louis Blues hat. Hopefully they understand, not like we’re playing them.

What can you expect on alestlelive.com/the alestle sports blog/and twitter.com/allanjlewis?

Good question.

I will be writing recaps for all four games Friday, as well as the tournament finals Saturday on the main page, blogging about my experiences on the blog and tweeting scores and random tidbits on the old Twitter.

So, if you are so inclined, and want to read about basketball and give me a reason for driving 700 miles I would appreciate it! In all seriousness though, it should be fun.

The pairings for the neutral-court games in Nashville were decided last night, with all eight opening round games in the OVC taking place. (4 women, 4 men)

Here is a link to the men’s bracket.

Here is a link to the women’s bracket.

Here are the semi-final match-ups if you do not like clicking links.

OVC Women’s Semifinals

• No. 1 Eastern Illinois vs. No. 4 UT Martin (12:00)
• No. 3 Austin Peay vs. No. 2 Morehead State (2:00)

OVC Men’s Semifinals

• No. 1 Murray State vs. No. 4 Eastern Illinois (6:00 ESPNU)
• No. 6 Tennessee Tech vs. No. 2 Morehead State (8:00 ESPNU)

So, as far as the women go, the seeds stood up, and on the men’s side Tennessee Tech pulled the 68-65 upset over Austin Peay, while  Murray (84-51 over Tennessee State) and Morehead (87-54 over Jacksonville St.) won their quarterfinal match-ups handily, which was expected.

The women’s side is intriguing, mainly due to the fact that the league is flat out terrible. Whoever wins this thing is going to the NCAA tournament, regardless of what Eastern Illinois did in the regular season (it really wasn’t much.) The Panthers ended their season 22-9 (16-2 OVC) and are currently projected as a a No. 16 seed by ESPN women’s Bracketologist Charlie Creme. Undoubtedly, whoever wins this tournament will have to deal with the likes of UCONN, Tennessee, Nebraska, North Carolina or Stanford and get crushed. What a prize it is.

For Murray State on the men’s side, they really have no other choice but to win. The Racers were perfect in the OVC until Morehead edged them by three on Feb. 25. Murray comes in to the OVC tournament with what many “experts” are considering to be a less than qualified resume for an at-large berth into the NCAA tournament.

Here is what the selection committee will see two Sunday’s from now if Murray fails to take home the OVC crown.

• RPI: 69
• Strength of Schedule: 278 (what you get playing SIUE twice, sad, but true)
• Big Wins: None.
• Bad losses: 83-72 (Western Kentucky)
• Notable losses 70-75 (California)

Murray has not gotten any attention on the bubble, but earned two votes in the last coaches poll, and could go on to win 29 games while potentially missing out on the dance. If that happens, Murray could become one of the poster-children for a potential 96 team tournament expansion, which in my mind works to use mid-majors against their will. Teams like Murray should be opposed to expansion, because it would allow in more crappy big schools with .500 records to go along with them, but an appearance could save a coaching job down the line.

It has a good side and a bad side. It would be a shame if Murray missed out, but Morehead is tough and has been there before.

Keeping with the OVC theme, next year’s tournament format will be changed to give the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds a bye into the semi-finals (like the Horizon League and West Coast Conference do. Seriously, why try letting anyone beat Butler or Gonzaga? It aint’ happening.

Under the new format, the three and four seeds are placed in the semifinals, and the remaining qualifiers duke it out in an opening round.

Sure makes for a looooooooong road to the NCAA’s for the underdog, but it prevents those pesky 13-17 teams from making the dance and making Selection Sunday hell.

The new tournament is going to be at the Municipal Auditorium, rather than it’s current home, Bridgestone Arena (the Sommet Center randomly decided to change it’s name.)

For SIUE, men’s basketball season is over. It’s a faded memory. It’s incredibly sad. I don’t like this.

Following the Cougar’s final game at the VC, a sloppy 10 point win over an NAIA school, Lennox Forrester, Aamir McCleary, Stephen Jones and Mark Yelovich addressed the media in a very emotional press conference.

It was the most honest I have seen this team all season, and I applaud them for that. I know they worked hard and I know the transition is rough. We have a young team, perfection was not even a question with this group of guys, they just gave us something to talk about.

The first words out of Yelovich’s mouth were somewhere along the lines of: “We weren’t very good,” and his sentiment is one that was obvious, but something that made me think.

Transitioning to Division I is damn hard.

These guys go out, play the most unbalanced schedule in the country, against a number of over-matched teams and NEVER have the opportunity to play what is a meaningful game in the immediate picture we see.

They talked about motivation, they talked about traveling from Edwardsville to North Dakota to Minneapolis to Los Angeles to Fullerton to Fort friggin Wayne and back to Edwardsville. That is a 5,700 mile trip and some serious jet lag.

It is hard to stay focused on the main goal: which in SIUE’s case is to compete, or attempt to compete while trying to build towards a future they will not see as players. It is about pride and about the FOUNDATION.

I have seen the word ‘foundation’ tossed around all the time with this team, and it is defiantly relevant. We are building to the future. The wins/losses are not going to steer potential recruits away at this point. SIUE is in a decent place right now as far as moving forward with its current plan, and really, we are ahead of many past transitional schools.

Right now the record means nothing. We can’t do anything with it, so who cares. Winning is great, but right now SIUE just needs to compete and focus on the bigger picture, so we are capable of doing some damage down the road.

Just think about it in comparison to SIUC.

The Salukis were in the Sweet 16, then made a few more NCAA tournaments and tanked. Enrollment in Carbondale is down, as is the basketball team. I would even go as far to consider Evansville rebuilding with Marty Simmons to be a situation in the Missouri Valley with more upside.

Now look at SIUE. The trends in sports are going to start to mirror enrollment, and education. With St. Louis next door and the media attention the Cougars will receive (albeit as the fourth most popular D-I school in the market, which is BS considering Mizzou and U of I are like 3 hours a pop away) along with newer facilities and this ‘foundational vision,’ we have hope.

The recruits look good, and Forrester said we should be a little better next season.

Now, we have no idea how Mike Messer, Gerald Jones and super-human-playa Alex Brown will do fresh out of high school, but anything is possible.

Think about the wonders the weight room could do for LeShaun Murphy’s game.

I still HATE the word “transition” and still expect wins, but really, there are bigger and better things ahead than what we are seeing now.

As far as next year, Forrester divulged some schedule information, so I will share.

SIUE will play in the Las Vegas Invitational: opening with road games at two college hoops powers, in Indiana and Northern Iowa. From there, SIUE will go to Vegas for a few neutral court contests.

Other eye-opening road games include Iowa, Illinois State, Murray State and Morehead State.

The Cougars will host Murray and Morehead as well.

Time for some congratulations.

• Ashley Bey. The senior plays her final game tonight when the Cougars host Cal-State Bakersfield at the Vadalabene Center. Bey, one of the best basketball thief’s in the nation and an SIUE record-holder deserves your support, as does the entire team ending a long, winding season.
• Ben Bishop. The guy who throws heavy things went to nationals and placed 10th. Good job.
• SIUE wrestling. Eight guys are going to Nationals. That’s awesome.

And a head-scratcher.

• SIUE golf coach Kyle Viehl resigned. What makes this even worse is the timing. The golf team resumes with the spring portion of its schedule March 8.

That’ll do it, hope to get some feedback while I’m in Nashville!

This video may come in handy….

The Wednesday Word 2.17.10

by Allan Lewis,  Alestle Sports Editor

Allan Lewis, Alestle Sports Editor

Hey, how’s it going?

Not a whole lot to talk about this week, so upside down smiley faces across the board if you were expecting 3 billion words again. It’s probably not going to happen because there wasn’t much basketball this week aside from the women’s big win against Oakland City in their sweet pink uniforms. But we’ll see how it goes; we play other sports, too, and I might get carried away.

First off, I am going to plug some work I did earlier in the week for the mid-majority, while the website’s author, Kyle Whelliston (a.k.a total badass blogging/journalism role model I met once)  is taking a break from college basketball to cover the Olympics. Basically, he asked readers to submit essays on their non-power conference schools and why they are important to the world of college basketball, so here is my little rant in convenient link form – (my school – SIU Edwardsville)

I am interested to hear any fan stories you may have as basketball season winds down, so if you are one of those die-hards, share your experiences in comment form, or something.

End of self plug.

The big question I have right now in SIUE athletics goes something like this. Is it time for the softball team to panic?

Now, not so fast, the Cougars have only played three games this year, but they sit at 1-2. I wrote last week about this team’s youth potentially being a stumbling block as the season plays out, and while Sandy Montgomery isn’t going to hold any excuses and likely expects another 40 win campaign, it isn’t looking like the Cougars will be crashing the national rankings anytime soon, but that can change.

Here’s why youth could squander a big year: we have seen it before.

Look no further than SIUE volleyball. The Cougars were a .500 team their first year against D-I competition, which is very impressive for a team built during a D-II era. They lost two key contributors from that team to graduation, and had to start all over. Instead of a proven record-setting setter in Mallory Clements, they had to go with a platoon of freshmen. They won three games.

The softball team graduated it’s big gun on the mound in Caitlin Colosimo, as well as a few starting position players.

Not everything is doom and gloom, because Erika Taylor fills the ace role nicely. If she can lead the front-end of the rotation and keep putting her numbers from last year up, which she has done this season with a two-hitter against Western Kentucky everything will be fine from that perspective, the other two pitchers still have to be relied on to provide innings and outs, something they did not do against Samford, with Ali Downing giving up seven runs (five earned) in six innings, and Lindsey Coleman giving up three in her lone inning of work. There is no question about Taylor leading the staff, but she needs help.

Run production throughout the first three games has been at a premium, and this is where SIUE could run into trouble down the road. The Cougars offense produced just one hit in their 4-2 loss to Lipscomb and managed one run in their shutout win over WKU.

It is going to come down to offense and defense for SIUE, and again, it’s too early to tell anything. Lots of games left to be played and plenty of time to grow and make ammends.

We will see.

Other than softball, there isn’t a ton to talk about with SIUE sports. The first pitch of baseball season is Friday. Men’s basketball breaks out a 10-day break that seems like it has been going on forever to play North Dakota again Thursday, hopefully having learned from their mistakes, and the women beat Oakland City, as I mentioned, which really isn’t worth any analysis in victory, as the MIGHTY Oaks are a mediocre at best D-II school and we were a heavily over-matched opponent. I will say this though, it is nice to see new faces and the younger players continually stepping up and providing big numbers for SIUE, with Courtney Kenner scoring 21 in the game.

Told you today was going to be brief.

Let’s step off campus and have a few random thoughts on the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics:

1. The Olympics are awesome.
2. The U.S. Men’s hockey team got underway in preliminary play Tuesday, with a 3-1 win over Switzerland. I’m happy with the way St. Louis Blues property David Backes scored, and Eric Johnson played solid on defense and find it hard to be cheering for Patrick Kane of my hated Blackhawks, but it’s all in the name of the red, white and blue.
3. Women’s hockey – Draw teams out of a hat for the bronze game and just play U.S.A vs. Canada for gold tomorrow and stop wasting our time. I’m already sick of 18-1 and 13-0 bloodbaths already. This isn’t hockey, this isn’t fair. I want U.S.A/Canada NOW!
4. Figure skating – Seriously, I have no idea who is winning or how you lose unless you fall flat on your ass. These athletes are phenomenal, with how they toss each other around like beanbags and catch them and do all this crazy stuff I couldn’t do on dry land.
5. Curling – Fun to watch, er, i guess, but still don’t get it.
6. Ski Jumping – The most dangerous thing ever invented, yet awesome.
7. Luge/Bobsled/Skeleton – Some of the most exciting Olympic action out there, and something I would love to do once in my life. It is sad to note however, the story of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritisvilli and his fatal crash. The guy was living his dream of becoming an Olympic athlete, and you never want to see anything like that happen. Ever. Goes to show how dangerous this sport really is.
8. Cross Country skiing sucks, but biathlon is awesome. Adding a sniper rifle automatically makes skiing long flat distances exciting.
9. Pacific Coliseum still exists?
10. It is 51 degrees in Vancouver. Way too balmy for summer Olympics. Bring them to St. Louis, Eh?

Speaking of St. Louis, watch out for Saint Louis University as the college basketball season winds down. The Bills have four straight wins, an aussie import, a great point guard and a spot on the bubble as we head towards March. At 16-8 coming out of the always tough Atlantic Ten, it wouldn’t surprise me if they make the dance. Their win over Joe Pott’s Dayton Flyers on Saturday was huge.

Lindenwood University is applying for membership with the NCAA and hoping to leave the NAIA for Division II. Apparently, they want to trade land for the Family Arena in St. Charles as a home venue. Good for them I guess.

Congratulations today go out to the SIUE Gold hockey team, qualifying for the MACHA playoffs, with an 11-3-1-1 record. They open up quarterfinal play Friday with who else? Saint Louis University in Peoria.

That just about wraps up this abbreviated edition of the Word.

May the “power of e” be with you all.

The Wednesday Word

By Allan Lewis, Alestle Sports Editor

Allan Lewis, Alestle Sports Editor

Seems like it’s been forever since we have updated this thing, my apologies, got a little sidetracked with classes starting back up, but the Alestle started back up as well, no real excuses, no rest for the weary, that sort of thing.

All of that being said, there is a lot to talk about, so let’s get rolling!

The SIUE men’s basketball team has hit a rough patch. There have not been a whole lot of positives to write home about this season, there are various things factoring into this, and it has been a frustrating time for all of us who consider ourselves to be fans of the mighty Cougars. (Yeah, I know, I shouldn’t be a fan, because I’m a so-called ‘journalist,’ but the school gets tuition money from me too.)

The last column I wrote summed up what I feel this team is about, and since it ran the team has done nothing to make me change my mind. We suck.

It is hard to be rough on these guys. You cannot help but like our team, they’re a bunch of lovable losers, really classy guys and I’m sure all the losing has been taking its toll on them and incredibly hard to stomach. Going to Division I isn’t easy, and I do not like using it as an excuse because SIUE has so much going for it, being in the Ohio Valley Conference (No. 21 in conference RPI) and what not, having a great recruiting pipeline (St. Louis and Chicago) and becoming more and more a legit college.

Now I’m done being nice and ready to talk business.

Monday’s game shows us how far we have come, or not come for that matter throughout this process.

UT Martin entered the game dead-last in the OVC. At the Alestle, we count OVC games against SIUE in our newspaper’s OVC standings. No one else does. So, as it stands, the Skyhawks are 0-9 in real OVC play, and 1-9 in Cougar-included OVC play. They are 3-16 overall, with wins against the Cougars and a pair of non-DI schools, Westminster (Tenn.) and the pride of St. Louis, Harris Stowe. To put it lightly, losing to this team was really really really embarrassing. (notice how the expletives were replaced with the word ‘really?’…Really?

How bad was it? Picture us losing to the mess SEMO was last season or New Jersey Tech during their two-season long losing streak. Maybe picture what it would be like if SIUE lost to a D-III school…oh, that actually happened. Never mind. Through Sunday, SIUE’s RPI ranking sat at No. 318 out of 346 D-I schools, Martin at 335, so that number will inevitably drop.

A few telling stats from the boxscore, and nothing really out of the ordinary here.

Mark Yelovich and Aamir McCleary combined to score 38 of SIUE’s 56 points. Breaking out the good old calculator, we figure that is 68 percent of the team’s offensive total. Without these two guys on the floor the Cougars have zero pulse.

McCleary’s night could have been even better had he been knocking down his shots. He was just 6-18 from the field, 2-4 from three-point territory and knocked down two of three free-throws. He had five rebounds, tied for the team lead with who else? Mark Yelovich.

So, Mark and Aamir, you get a pass on this one.

SIUE shot 38 percent as a team, and the bench scored ZERO POINTS in 61 combined minutes. 30 of that went to the defensive efforts of Stephen Jones, while the freshmen LeShaun Murphy played just seven minutes, going 0-2 with one rebound. SIUE collected just 27 rebounds the entire game, to UT Martin’s 46. SIUE had just six on the offensive glass to 15 for UTM.

The Cougars again, took 24 shots from beyond the three-point line, making eight.

So, what is new?

Absolutely nothing.

There is really no point in analyzing this team because every single game they have the same problems, and if you read up on your Cougar basketball you can easily get a sense of Deja Vu. Wait, did they just take the game story from the Kennesaw State game and slap on UT Martin’s name instead? Seems like it.

A change in philosophy is really the only thing in order here. Lennox Forrester claims to preach to his guys about playing the game inside out, working the interior post and kicking it out to create open looks. Coach, how do you improve on rebounding? “well, I’ll tell the guys to box out and harp on it in practice…” yet, here we are, 20 games into the basketball season and the same things are happening over and over again.

Is it too late to switch things up and implement a motion or Princeton style offense to push aside the failed high post strategy? Probably.

Again, by no means do I want to be hard on these guys, but the smartest college basketball man I have ever met, Kyle Whelliston of the Mid Majority (who was in town for the Robert Morris game,) said it best trying to describe what he has seen from SIUE. He told me our guys have a real business-like approach to the game. Kind of like robots, they go out there, play basketball and that’s it. On a more awesome note, here is a photo of myself and his friend Bally.

Next time you watch SIUE, pay attention to their composure on the court.

I won’t go into detail about the Robert Morris game, but 92-71? Come on. They are in the United States Collegiate Athletic Association. I had never even heard of that before the game. Yes, there is a level of college basketball BELOW the NAIA and we witnessed it.

In other news (somewhat related,) there has been some off-the-court trouble-making on the part of SIUE recruit Alex Brown, which I did a little brief on a few weeks ago but alas, the juicy details regarding his suspension from the Herrin High School basketball team have emerged, in an article by the Benton Evening News.

At first I laughed, then I cried, and after that I wrote a View From the Sidelines column sharing my opinions on the matter for Thursday’s paper. Big decision looming for coach Forrester, his staff and AD Hewitt, and it could mean another scholarship becoming available during the off-season recruiting period if SIUE decides to act on the matter.

In my opinion, Brown, the Harts and the Hart’s mom; who inevitably attempted to take a bullet for her kids as all mothers of distressed teenagers do, are not giving away the whole story. There has got to be more than this, and it could cost Brown more than just half a high school basketball season.

Another intriguing SIUE basketball related note involves former Cougar guard Brandon Dunson.

Dunson left the Cougars after playing just one semester of basketball upon transferring into SIUE from UT Chattanooga for Wabash Valley, a junior college. It kind of upset me, to be honest because I was expecting big things from the kid. Apparently, people obviously more important than me feel the same way.

I didn’t understand the reasoning behind Dunson’s transfer to Wabash Valley of all places. Maybe Bradley in the Missouri VALLEY, but not WABASH VALLEY. The reasoning behind his departure is now apparent because bigger and better things await, and transferring to another mid-major right away for his sophomore season of eligibility means another long red-shirt period due to NCAA guidelines. Dunson is getting scouted HEAVILY by the likes of UCLA, Gonzaga, Arizona State, Illinois, Oklahoma State, USC and Nevada. The Gonzaga people seem to be excited at the prospect of having Dunson join their squad, and according to Dunson’s twitter page, all of the major schools looking at him seem to be eager for his services.

This is jaw-dropping news to me that he was ever that good. Dunson is averaging 11.5 points a game at Wabash, and looked to be an intriguing player to watch at the mid-major level, but never a guy playing half his season on ESPN. Looks like the kid has options now, good for him, but SIUE could sure use his contributions right now…(cough…play LeShaun Murphy more…cough.)

Men’s basketball is all the talk, because of the media coverage, but the women have been doing fairly well recently, as in not consistently being awful, and being winners of their last two home contests against D-I schools, something the men have yet to do over two seasons. Things are really looking up for Amanda Levens and crew, they could legitimately compete for the OVC regular season crown next season, with the conference on the women’s side shaping up horrendously thus far in 2010, (although it would all be for naught, with no trip to the conference tourney and what not.)

We have baseball, softball and tennis getting started up soon, hopefully we see a few positive story-lines come across featuring those teams down the road, because we need them.

Finally, I just wanted to end by congratulating the Southern Star Dancers on winning their competition this past weekend in Chicago. Good job.

Also, wanted to give a shout out to Alex Helton for his feedback on a few of our blogs, not hard to agree on any analysis of the Cougars, or headless chickens.

That’s all, keep your pant’s off the ground all you cool cats.

SIUE hosts UMKC tonight

The SIUE Cougars return home tonight after a respectable showing against Purdue on national television a week ago (I thought it was respectable enough) to take on the University of Missouri at Kansas City Kangaroos. (Who according to a source are staying at the Marriot in Union Station for this game,) hard to imagine they spent Christmas there after their game a week ago at Saint Louis University, but that’s where they are. Probably liked it too much.

The Roo’s have played a rather pedestrian schedule. SIUE is their fourth oponent they will have played inelligible for the NCAA Tournament, the others being North Dakota, (W: 70-63) Houston Baptist (W: 102-87) and Central Arkansas, (W: 78-67) as well as two wins over Division two schools (Lincoln (Mo.) and Truman State.) UND, HBU and UCA are all bottom-50 RPI teams, and none of their wins really stick out.

All in all, UMKC is a very beatable team for the Cougars, who have moved up 21 spots in the RPI to 308 at 2-10 while UMKC enters at 4-5 and number 261.

Last time out, the Roo’s gave a much-improved Saint Louis University Billikins team a battle at Chaifetz Arena, going into the break tied at 25 before losing by seven. Trey McKinney scored 18 and had six rebounds to lead the team in an attempt to pull a major upset against SLU, a team which started the year hot outside of Atlantic Ten play with impressive victories over Nebraska, SIU Carbondale and Belmont.

Exactly a year ago, the Cougars beat the Kangaroos 77-71 at Kemper Arena behind a 24 point effort off the bench by Aaron Garriott, who is no longer with the team. As far as how tonight’s projected starters faired points-wise in that game to get an idea of what we may see tonight: Yelovich (9) Bundalo (14) McCleary (6) Jones (2) Bowles (2).

Last year’s UMKC squad went 7-24, and just 3-15 in the Summit, so they are looking to be a little bit improved this time around, and I expect they will be. SIUE’s record may not indicate it, but all signs point to an also-better squad than last season. Remember, SIUE was a couple of breaks from victories against Lipscomb, IPFW and Ball State.

It’s not horseshoes, and it’s not handgrenades, but there is no NCAA tournament at the end of the road, so almost gets an honorable mention today.

What should the Cougars be looking for tonight? Thankfully not Dane Brumagin, the senior forward who led the Roos with 34 points in last season’s game.

They have a trio of guys averaging in double-figures, Jay Coisnard is their biggest offensive weapon (14.2 ppg) with Latrese Mushatt (11.8 ppg) and Jones (11.1 ppg) following up.

The Kangaroos are not the most inept rebounding team, their highest glass cleaner averages just over 5 a game, the team just under 30 (29.9 RPG)

And Statistically, here is how it breaks down.

PPG FG% FT% 3P% RPG
UMKC 69.8 46.0 68.1 29.9
SIUE 61.4 42.0 69.0 33.0

So a fairly even battle, Cougars have played the tougher schedule out of the two teams, and with this one at home it is going to be a real trap game for the Kangaroos. My money is on SIUE to move to 3-10 on the season, keep in mind UMKC may possibly be looking ahead to their game Wednsesday at Missouri.

Game time is at 7:00, hope to see a packed Vadalabene Center, I will be attending as a fan instead of a journalist for this one, first time I have been able to do that for a while, so I am looking forward to it and being biased.

Allan Lewis
Alestle Sports Editor.

SIUe @ #4 Purdue Preview (7 p.m. CST on ESPNU)

I’m back!

Good afternoon everybody, hope break is going well, hopefully better than its been to the Cougars so far after a 79-61 loss to Loyola at the Vadalabene Center Sunday.

It’s back to the court today for Lennox Forrester and crew, and things don’t get any easier with the fourth best team in the nation waiting.

Purdue is a 41 point favorites against the Cougars.

It’s tough to break down these guarantee games. We know SIUE is the definite underdog in this one, and likely the results will not be pretty. We will lose and the basketball program will get a big check for having the kahoneys to travel to West Lafayette.

After the Loyola game, Forrester was quoted in an article by the Alton Telegraph as saying “If we play like we did (Sunday) we will lose by 70 points.”

Unfortunately I have to attribute them because I was unable to make it out to the game, but it’s the same thing.

The Purdue contingent is not too happy about this one being on the schedule. I don’t blame them. SIUE comes into this one ranked #327 in the latest RPI ratings, Purdue is #8, a little down from their AP national ranking due to their strength of schedule. Purdue’s schedule is ranked 69th toughest in the nation up to this point, after playing the likes of North Dakota State (#280) IPFW (#263) Ball State (#220) and CS Northridge (#153). There is a lot of complaining over cupcakes in West Lafayette.

Needless to say, the Boilermakers have beat some decent teams. You don’t climb to the #4 national ranking doing nothing. They have wins over #11 Tennessee in the Virgin Islands, a win over Wake Forest in the Big Ten ACC Challenge and a nice victory over Alabama. SIUE is their final tuneup for Big Ten play, which begins against Iowa (a team I am convinced SIUE could beat, the Hawkeyes are awful) next Tuesday.

Here are a few things Boilers fans are saying on ESPN’s game conversation.

“purdue is going to kick butt tonight they r going to crush siue”

“This game is gonna be a blowout. Boiler up!”

“no matter how soft siu-edwardsville is, it’s hard to resist +41. it’s christmas time… certainly purdue will show some compassion?” (my favorite one!)

“purdue’s schedule needs some big boy games, enough of the playing high school teams.” OUCH!

“remind me again why this game is even being played?? I will be very disappointed if we ever schedule a team of this magnitude – or lack thereof – again.”

So, to conclude, the Purdue people are not really excited about this one.

So, who to watch for Purdue?

E’Twaun Moore (16.1 PPG)
Robbie Hummel (15 PPG 7.3 RPG)
I would expect atleast 20 and ten from Hummel if Cougars cannot contain him. I would expect Yelovich to be matching up with him, expect Stephen Jones getting a lot of minutes for defensive purposes to guard Moore.

Keys to the game for SIUE:

1. Don’t try and run with Purdue. The Boilers average 78 points and SIUE CANNOT run with them. Try and slow things down in the half-court and get some open looks. With this offense it is not going to happen, but that is a way to keep this one somewhat close.

2. Rebounding. As usual with the Cougars, they are 2-0 when they out rebound the opponent, 0-9 when they don’t. They need to pay extra close attention to blocking out.

3. Don’t play like you did Sunday. Forrester said his team would lose by 70 points if this happens. They cannot play scared and have to come out with some swagger.

That’s about all for now, as I wait for my SIUE hoodie in the washing machine. Game time is 45 minutes away from Mackey Arena, and Buffalo Wild Wings for me. Hope to see you there.

Allan Lewis
Alestle Sports Editor