Wednesday Word NCAA TOURNAMENT EDITION!!!!

By Allan Lewis Alestle Sports Editor

(This blog only works if you press play on this video and keep reading.)

I have never been good at filling out brackets. Ever since middle school, I have been entrenched in the Madness and find this to be a special time each and every year. I remember taking the full-page bracket printed in the Edwardsville Intelligencer, tacking it on my basement wall and coming home from school just to watch basketball in surround sound from three in the afternoon until midnight, filling it out as each game goes final.

My eighth grade teacher and a few of my high school teachers would even take time out of the school day to turn the opening round games on. It is safe to say March Madness is an American tradition, something everyone young and old can relate to and bond over.

This time of year, basketball is the  hallway locker talk, water cooler talk and rocking chair talk. Everyone wants to know who is going to pull off the upsets and cut down the nets to “one shining moment.”

When it comes to the all-american office pool, everyone participates. In 7th grade we were selling brackets for $5 under the table with $60 payouts. Women who have no idea about basketball even buy in to cubicle competitions. Some have their husbands do the work for them, because for some reason they believe they can tell the future and others flip coins or decide using the ever-popular mascot-battle-royale technique.

Mountain Hawk beats Jayhawk. It’s the more effin’ cool variety of hawk, and probably has claws. Kansas’ mascot looks too happy anyways.

Done, and done.

Only once in my life have I actually placed in one of these bracket competitions. In 2004, I got second, pairing Georgia Tech against Connecticut for the national championship with the yellow jackets taking home the plaque.

People thought I was nuts. “Georgia Tech?! are you out of your mind? No, Jarrett Jack is the man, and he was, carrying GT all the way to the final, where they lost to the number one team in the nation. Since Connecticut was the favorite, everyone picked them to win the whole thing, and thus I came in second because I picked the right upsets.

That doesn’t happen all the time, because the whole damn thing is so random, the office secretaries have just as good of a shot at winning as Joe Lunardi.

It has always been my nature to cheer for the little guy. The whole mid-major philosophy I have began when I started following college basketball. After looking at past tournament brackets, I came to the conclusion this was in 2001.

The 2001 NCAA tournament was a good one to start with too.

This was the year Butler and Gonzaga emerged as 10 and 12 seeds to reach the second round and sweet 16. Holy Cross nearly knocked off Kansas. Nine years later, look at what Butler and the Zags have become. They are power teams in non-power conferences. Everything has to start somewhere.

In 2002, the little guy became more local, and in 2007 the little guy I had such admiration for as well as it’s former coach became public enemy number one. (I actually began to dislike this particular coach when he moved to a bigger in-state school but cracked a joke with him about my sports reporter’s starstruckedness when we visited his current school to watch SIUE play, so he’s an alright guy.)

OH! that guy!

And those are the Southern Illinois University Carbondale Salukis.

SIU’s sweet 16 run included defeating Bob Knight’s Texas Tech team and coming from behind to beat Georgia before UCONN dropped them from contention.

This really bummed me out. Carbondale, I am embarrassed to say was now my team, and I didn’t even know who they were until that tournament.

This season, I am not competing in a pool of any sort. Sure, I have filled out a bracket just for fun, but my predictions are way too bold to be considered for any prize money, and I don’t want Murray State to cost me any money. I am a supporter of mid-major basketball to the extreme. I am really fascinated by the way the majority of Division I basketball teams go unnoticed by the entire country. People see Wofford on the bracket and wonder who they are, even the majority of national basketball analysts are clueless to where the heart of college basketball lives. Sure, Duke, Kentucky, Kansas and North Carolina are special places. They have great fan-bases, tradition and are damn good at playing the game a majority of the time. They are not the only ones out there, and the NCAA tournament brings this into the limelight. The power six conferences (Big XII, Big Ten, SEC, Pac Ten, ACC and Big East) only account for 73 of the 347 D-I schools in the nation.

The fact is there is a hell of a lot of good basketball elsewhere (someday, SIUE will be included in that list).

Upsets happen. New heroes are born and college basketball is as much a part of me as it is something I want to work with for a living.

This year’s NCAA tournament will be no different, and by Saturday everyone will be complaining over who ruined their bracket, a right these schools relish having. When the brackets were revealed Sunday, I was discouraged to see Florida and Wake Forest sneak in. Give me William & Mary and Wichita State any day.

Last night, we had the play-in-game. The biggest atrocity in sports. Arkansas Pine Bluff defeated Winthrop and will advance to play Duke in the real bracket. Will they win? Probably not. A 16 seed has still never defeated a No. 1. Could it happen? There is the possibility, and that is what is so special about college basketball.

Instead of acting like an expert and telling you who WILL win their opening round games or even who SHOULD win, I will write about who COULD win.

Vermont: As I said, and everyone knows, a 16 seed has never won a men’s NCAA tournament game. The Catamounts provide the biggest chance in a while, facing Syracuse in the first round. I may be dreaming, but look at what we have here. The Orange are the most vulnerable of the top seeds. They lost an exhibition game to D-II LeMoyne at the Carrier Dome. Granted, this was an exhibition game and LeMoyne’s Super Bowl. Syracuse was playing to avoid injury and probably didn’t care too much. They overlooked LeMoyne. Vermont beat Syracuse in the 2005 tournament as a 13 seed. Vermont was 25-9 this season and 12-4 in the American East Conference and beat Rutgers. Under-seeded Cornell beat them by only eight. Marques Blakely is good. If Syracuse over-looks Vermont like they did LeMoyne history could be on the agenda.

Murray State: Here at SIUE, the Racers are a team we should be familiar with. They laid a 30 point beatdown on the Cougars at the Vadalabene Center and another lopsided win against us at home. I have seen this team play three times in person, the game at SIUE and twice at the Ohio Valley Conference Tournament and they are GOOD. This is a 30 win team, one of only three in the entire country. Sure, they didn’t play an SEC or Big XII schedule, but they won 30 games. I don’t care what league you are in, that is hard to accomplish. This team is not a one-man show either, the Racers are deep. Ivan Aska, B.J. Jenkins, Danero Thomas, Tony Easley and Issiah Cannan all average in double figures at around ten points per game. THAT IS FIVE DIFFERENT PLAYERS. Top it off with Issac Miles throwing in 9.5 points. Cannan hit a half-court shot from his knees. Murray can run on anyone, and is a very strong and athletic team. Put them up against Vanderbilt in San jose, and you have a TRUE neutral court match-up. The Racers are as dangerous as they come.

Oakland: This is a 17-1 team from the Summit League and winners of 21 of 22 games. They are hot, hot, hot! Point guard Jonathon Jones led the nation in assists last season and this is an attacking team. The Golden Grizzlies average over 76 points per game, and have a center averaging 17 points and 11 rebounds. Oakland lost games this season by more than double-digits to Wisconsin, Memphis, Syracuse, Kansas, Oregon and Michigan State, but those games were long gone in the early non-conference schedule. Their recent winning ways should bring confidence with them to the dance. Look for them to  push Pitt for 40 minutes, and potentially bust some brackets.

Cornell or Temple: Jay Bilas said during ESPN’s bracketology special Cornell should have been a No. 5 seed. I don’t know about that, as Cornell enters the dance as a 12 seed against another dangerous mid-major in Temple. This is going to be one of the better first round games on the agenda. Here we have two of the best three-point shooting teams in the nation, and two very experienced teams. This is the game everyone is singling out as a an annual “12/5 upset” more or less because of how evenly these two teams stack up. Cornell owned the Ivy League. Why is Cornell so sexy in the eyes of everyone around? Well, they beat Alabama and gave Kansas a scare. Syracuse beat them by 15, but Cornell is the team carrying the torch nationally for the little guy. Cornell’s big problem is rebounding. Jeff Foote grabs eight boards a game, but they really don’t have any inside presence outside of him. Cornell lives and dies with the three point shot. Temple beat Villanova, Virginia Tech and Xavier. This is a very interesting matchup between two very good teams. If Temple gets past Cornell, they could be a sleeper to contend for the Final Four. Seriously.

Wofford: I mentioned these guys earlier, and as a 13 seed playing against a streaky Wisconsin team they are going to be interesting to watch. The Terriers were 26-8 and reside in the Southern Conference. This team played a very tough non-conference schedule and made a few believers, including me the two times I saw them play on TV. They opened the season losing to Pitt by one. They then beat Georgia and destroyed a non-D-I school 81-39 before two close road losses to Bradley and Illinois while the Fighting Illini were still nationally ranked. Michigan State beat the Terriers 72-60. Fact is, this team can stick around and play against superior competition. In their league, they only lost one game: a two point loss to the College of Charleston. They will not be intimidated by Trevon Hughes, John Lauer and the Badgers. Both of these teams like to slow down the tempo. Wofford averages 61 points per game, Wisconsin just 56. Expect this game to be won in the 50’s. Anything higher and the Terriers are likely on top. Both teams shoot around 44 percent each game, but Wisconsin is superior at the free-throw line, so the Terriers need to keep Wisconsin away from the stripe.

Utah State: Who else is excited for this aggie-riffic showdown and finds it not the least bit ironic the WAC regular season champions were paired with Texas A&M? I’m not, I know how the committee rolls. Anyways, this is another dangerous bunch not everyone is familiar with. This team rolled through the WAC. They lost two conference games all season, against New Mexico State, (who beat them again in the WAC tournament finals) and Louisiana Tech, who knocked off Murray State as well. They avenged both of those losses in later match-ups. Out of conference, the Aggies really didn’t do anything too impressive. Their best wins were against Wichita State in a bracketbuster game which likely busted the Shocker’s at-large hopes and kept their own alive, and Morehead State. Both sets of Aggies score about the same amount of points per game, but USU’s game hinges primarily on defense, allowing 59 points a game. They have a guy named Pooh scoring eight points a game. I’m sold there.

Siena: Ah, Siena. (notice how they are underlined.) I am picking the Saints to roll ALL THE WAY TO SPORTS BUBBLE STADIUM AND CRASH THE DANCE BABY!!! (Totally deserved ALLCAPS for its randomness.) Okay, so Siena is not the strongest mid in the field, but they got a damn favorable draw in the tournament. Look, Siena is experienced. The last two seasons they have been in the second round of the tournament. They know what it is about, and experience is one of the most dangerous intangibles a team can have this time of the year. They are building a MEAC supremacy. They lost to Temple by four, (we can call that a good loss if there is such a thing) but lost decisive outcomes to Northern Iowa, Butler and Georgia Tech. Really, this isn’t a smart team to ride to the Final Four, but look at their draw. They get Purdue in the first round. Purdue with Robbie Hummel is one of the five best teams in the nation. Purdue without Robbie Hummel is as Big Ten as Iowa. The Boilers were a mess in their Big Ten semifinal loss to Minnesota. They were absolutely humiliated. With four minutes to play in the first half, they had six points. They went into halftime with 11. What happened to Minnesota in the conference title game against Ohio State? They were blown out. If the Saints get past Purdue they get the winner of Texas A&M/Utah State. Another winnable game. In the sweet 16 they are looking at Duke, unless a tanking Texas team or Louisville manages to find their way past the Blue Devils. At the bottom end of this bracket is Villanova (I guarantee they are knocked off by this point) and potentially Richmond, St. Mary’s or Old Dominion. The road is paved with gold for Siena. Alex Franklin and Ryan Rossiter will be big for Siena, as will be controlling the tempo and spreading the ball around and scoring underneath, with Siena averaging 14 assists per game.

Old Dominion: The Monarchs could be more dangerous than Siena. Look. At. The. Schedule. ODU played everyone. They beat Georgetown, and I’d bet money on them doing it again if given the opportunity. They beat Long Beach State, the second best team in the Big West by 39 points. They lost close games to Missouri, Richmond, Dayton, George Mason and Northern Iowa. Their worst losses were by 14 and 12 points respectively to Mississippi State and Virginia Commonwealth. Look, college basketball is all about how well you match-up with a team. Different styles dictate the play and some teams are better than others head-to-head but not on paper. ODU has the potential to be one of those teams. The Colonial Athletic Association is a tough conference to play in night in, night out. VCU, George Mason and William & Mary can play some ball. Notre Dame is better WITHOUT Luke Harangody and are over-seeded after a nice run in the Big East Tournament. ODU has the CAA’s player of the year, Gerald Lee and are tough defending and rebounding the basketball. Notre Dame on the flip-side is not a defensive team. ODU is not the best three-point shooting team out there, but inside the paint they are deadly.

Richmond or St. Mary’s here is your other mid-on-mid match-up, this one pitting a No. 7 against a No. 10. Like the Temple/Cornell contest, these are two dangerous teams from two of the best non-power conferences. Richmond is not only scary because they are nicknamed the Spiders either. They play in the Atlantic Ten, and have used their vicious bite to knock of Mississippi State, Florida, Missouri and Old Dominion this season. Out of the West Coast Conference, Saint Mary’s has always been second in power behind Gonzaga, but are quickly starting to make a name for themselves as another legit contender from the WCC. The Gaels downed the Zags 80-61 in the conference championship, after losing two earlier in-season contests to them. They routed New Mexico State, the WAC conference tournament champions 100-68 to open the season followed up by a 81-58 win over San Diego State, another tournament team. Vanderbilt beat the Gaels by two in Nashville. This game pits two very dangerous teams against each other. St. Mary’s has Omar Samhan, who is an absolute beast. The dude puts up 20 points and 11 rebounds every time out. That is insane unless your name is LeBron James, and then it’s a minuscule performance at best, but for college that’s hella good. Look at Mickey McConnell and Matthew Belladevoda and what they are able to pitch in, and you have a good college basketball team. This is also a team averaging 80 points a game. Offensively, it is hard to find any team capable of matching up with the Gaels. Their weakness lies on defense in the paint, and this is where Richmond comes into play. They can score too, with Kevin Anderson and his 17.8 per game leading the way. By the way, St. Mary’s is number one in the nation defending the three, with opponents shooting 17 percent from beyond the arc. Richmond can keep teams at bay too, at 24 percent. Both teams are near the bottom of college basketball turning it over, so whoever is able to hold onto the ball and play defense will take this one. It could become a track meet.

SIUE: just kidding.

Enjoy the tournament, games get underway at 11:00 Thursday. Good luck to all the bracketeers out there, I have a feeling you may need it this year.

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….

From the other side

Being a fan has its perks

The Cougars blew another halftime lead and lost to UMKC tonight.

I was not happy about it.

Normally my job requires me to show no emotion or bias in supporting SIUE athletics. I am after all, a journalist. First and foremost though, I have a lot of pride for the Cougars, which I feel is okay since I am a student. Being christmas/winter/holiday break (whichever you prefer) and being a native of Edwardsville (and not having anywhere to go home for the holidays because, um, I’m already here,) I wanted to go to the Vadalabene Center tonight. I had two choices: be the journalist I am, providing some sort of game story recap on this very blog, attend the post-game press conference, get quotes and provide some live game blog analysis, or since the Alestle does not print over the recess from classes go to the game in an entirely different function. That of a fan.

And I chose the latter.

This was new to me. I could yell things at the other team and clap. it didn’t help the Cougars efforts being one of about ten students in the audience of 1,650 but being able to partake in the emotion and intensity of college basketball was something special for me.

It didn’t hurt that the marketing people chose me out of the deserted student section to participate in the Commerce Bank Dash for Cash at the first media timeout of the second half, they really didn’t have a choice. It was me or my friend who attends Illinois State. After the home opener Nov. 15 it was safe to say he was not stepping foot on that court. I got $93 out of it, not too shabby, considering I would have made about $24 covering the exact same game and having to do some serious “work.”

The Cougars jumped out to an early 9-0 lead while shooting over 60 percent from the field. Nikolo Bundalo opened things up with a nice hook-shot in the lane, Mark Yelovich tallied a mid-range floater, Denycko Bowles hit a three and Yelovich capped it off nailing another jump shot.

Things were looking good for SIUE. UMKC could not get a rebound if their scholarships depended on it and SIUE was doing a good job maintaining defensive pressure and forcing turnovers.

Then it got away a little bit and the tide began to turn. The Kangaroos fought off an 8-0 run of their own to get within one and after another Cougars run they got back into the game yet again and went into the locker room down two.

My first thought at the break was “here we go again.”

The same thing happened to SIUE at home against Lipscomb and IPFW. They led Lipscomb by eight at halftime on the road before getting pummeled in the second half towards a 20 point defeat. It is nothing against the will of the players, they just cannot play 40 minutes of solid basketball on any given night. You can bet on 20, but 40 is pushing it just a little bit.

It is all the mental things that cost the Cougars tonight, and I saw a direct correlation with SIUE’s volleyball team. Now, I am starting to talk like a sports reporter, but the problem with SIUE’s 2-27 volleyball squad was their inability to put together a solid match throughout. When opponents made runs the Cougars never had the intangible ability to shift the momentum back in a positive direction. Back to basketball, it is the same problem. It is all mental. You can contribute this to whatever you want, inexperience, coaching or execution. In my opinion, tonight’s loss was a combination of all three things.

Inexperience: When UMKC went on runs the Cougars confidence took a nose-dive and there was no way they would be able to kick it into overdrive. Chalk this up to having a young team.

Coaching: Kevin Stineman should not be starting basketball games. Nothing against him, but he is not what we need in the starting five even if Stephen Jones can’t go, which was the case today. There is no reason in my mind at least to play a defensive specialist in the starting lineup when you have scorers like LeShaun Murphy at your disposal. Sure, Murphy is a freshmen, but when he is on his game he has the ability to be the most electric player on the basketball court. Murphy is fourth on the team in scoring with 6.1 ppg in limited action. Stineman? 3.2 ppg. Bowles probably needs to get his starter tag removed as well, in favor of David Boarden. A starting lineup of Bundalo, Yelovich, Murphy, McCleary and Boarden sounds absolutely deadly in my mind. Stineman had two points to show for his 27 minutes on the court. Bowles put together a decent effort with a season-high ten points, but he has not proven to be a consistent answer for SIUE.

Execution: The Cougars take way too many three-point shots. You can attribute this to having virtually no interior game, but you have to try to get buckets however you can and the perimeter is not the answer. SIUE went 4-18 from long-range, and the second half was just a disaster from that point of view. It doesn’t help that there isn’t someone to depend as a garbage disposal down low to punish the inside and get some hard-earned points, but the Cougars need to find better ways to attack defenses. I don’t care if Dob Mavrik rebounds with one hand or if Zeke Schneider is still a work in progress. UMKC was switching up their looks a lot, and that proved frustrating, as they mixed and matched zone coverage with man-to-man throughout the second half. Execution was also lacking on the defensive end. SIUE sent the Kangaroos to the free-throw line 35 times, and they capitalized on 27 attempts. There’s your game. Nearly 43 percent of all of UMKC’s points CAME FROM THE FREE THROW LINE. It deserves to be capitalized and now spelled out, because it was FOURTY-THREE PERCENT OF ALL OF THEIR POINTS. You cannot do that and expect to win at any level of basketball. That, is how you win a basketball game shooting 38 percent from the field.

Rebounding was a little bit better for the Cougars, but UMKC is not a good rebounding team by any stretch of the imagination. They came in averaging under 30 per contest. They ended up holding the advantage 36-32 in this one, after SIUE got a little sloppy boxing out in the second half.

SIUE forced more turnovers than they gave up, 20-15, but it sure didn’t seem like it. Almost every time the Cougars had a critical posession the ball ended up headed the other way.

The last ten minutes of this game my hands were on my head and my heart was sinking with every missed oppurtunity or UMKC free-throw attempt. Yelling at UMKC’s Kurt Korver and telling him he’ll never be as good as his brother (Utah Jazz forward and former Creighton bluejay Kyle Korver) was also a highlight of this rare oppurtunity to just kick back and watch some Cougar basketball, just as I did watching the game against Purdue on ESPNU last week.

I would have traded my $93 in prize money for that first Cougar’s Division I victory on home soil, but it wasn’t meant to be, and now I’m left with a wad leaving people wondering where I’ve been and this blog entry highlighting the woulda coulda shoulda’s of tonight’s game.

As a fan I just have to keep reminding myself the wins will come, and one day we will be crowned Ohio Valley Conference champions earning ourselves an automatic bid in the big dance, and as a reporter I have to remind myself that one day in the near future I will have to ask Coach Forrester another tough question.

Allan Lewis
Alestle Sports Editor

LIVE BLOG SIUE vs. ISU

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Previewing IC and exhibition number two

The SIUE women’s team will be taking the court in the next hour and a half against the University of Missouri-St. Louis, but for now let’s focus on the men, who will follow with their second dress rehearsal for the University of Illinois and their season opener next Friday.

We will see Mark Yelovich, Stephen Jones and Nikolo Bundalo tonight. They missed Wednesday’s game for “violating team rules,” and the suspension imposed on them by Head Coach Lennox Forrester was just for that particular game.

It will be interesting to see if the Cougars can keep a balanced offensive attack going with three additional weapons, and perhaps their biggest in Yelovich in the lineup, after six players scored in double figures against MacMurray.

Now to talk about Illinois College, the first of three teams SIUE will face with “Illinois” in their name, and by far the easiest of the group to handle.

This should be a walk in the park tonight. Just like MacMurray, IC is located in Jacksonville, Illinois, and just like MacMurray has an enrollment under 1,000 at 891.

They compete in NCAA Division III. They went 11-12 last season, and 8-8 in conference play.

This will be the second all-time meeting between the Cougars and Blue Boys, who first met in 1987, a 100-73 SIUE victory.

David Stewart is going to be the Blue Boy to watch, he averaged just over 11 points last season to compliment five rebounds per-game.

3 SIUE Players to watch

Mark Yelovich – Led SIUE in scoring last season, making his season debut tonight

Zeke Schneider – Important to see if the new recruit can rebound from a rough outing Wednesday. He fouled out and had four turnovers in 11 minutes.

LeShaun Murphy – Best second half of any Cougar Wednesday.

That’s all for now, look for live posts during both the men’s and women’s games this evening.

Allan Lewis

-Alestle Sports Editor